Who Killed Daniel Pearl (32 page)

There's the All-Party Hurriyat Conference, the United Jihad Council, the Markaz al-Dawah al-Irshad with headquarters in Lahore. There are a number of more or less well-known and powerful charities. And then there is al-Rashid, the most important of these NGOs that collect from all over the country the famous “
zakat
” or “Islamic tax,” which is then redistributed to great and noble causes of Muslim human-rights: Kosovo, where the organization apparently gave away the equivalent of $35,000 in 2002; Kashmir, its burning obligation; Chechnya, where, indignant over the systematic embezzlement of funds provided by the UN, al-Rashid used its own networks to bring in $750,000 worth of food and medical supplies over two years; Afghanistan, where for the annual cost of $4 million, it prides itself on running a network of bakeries all over the country, capable of providing bread daily to 50,000 men, women and children. And that's not including the sewing machines for war widows, the computer training centers for Kandahar youth, the ultramodern clinics set up in Ghazni, Kandahar and Kabul, or, in Pakistan itself, the free distribution of sheep for the Aïd holiday. Is not charity the first duty of the pilgrim on the path to God?

The problem is that when you dig a little—as I did by going to the headquarters of the charity in Rawalpindi, and examining its books, and questioning one of its “volunteers”—you discover some very troubling details.

The date the Trust was set up, for example: 1996. Which is when the Taliban come to power.

The context of its activities. The money, in Chechnya, is given to Sheikh Omer Bin Ismail Dawood, who is one of the fundamentalist chieftains opposed to the authority of Maskadov. In Kashmir, it goes to terrorist organizations and the most fanatical and criminal combatants. And, as for the bread distribution in Afghanistan, the only thing that isn't mentioned in the Trust's annual report is the fact that the withdrawal of the World Food Program and the subsequent takeover of its 155 bakeries in 2000 and 2001 was linked to the prohibition against women working. At the time, it was the height of the confrontation between Western NGOs and the Taliban authorities, and the NGO's policy was to say “ease up on the status of women, let them work, and we'll maintain aid.” The fact that the Trust took over the bakeries from the WFP was a political gesture that supported the position, the ideology, of the Taliban.

Its premises. The al-Rashid Trust, like all the big NGOs, has headquarters, offices, warehouses, and just simple addresses where donors are invited to send their money. But something else that goes unmentioned— yet is supported by a 22 November ad in the newspaper
Zarb-e-
Momin
, for example, detailing where to send donations for “Afghan victims of U.S. terrorism”—is that in a lot of medium-sized cities, such as Mansehra, Mingora, and Chenabnagar, or even in the really big cities such as Lahore, Rawalpindi or Jalalabad in Afghanistan, the Trust shares its offices (and therefore probably its staff, its fund raising structure, and even its bank accounts) with a party, the Jaish e-Mohammed, whose humanitarian mission is not so obvious. What the report is careful to avoid saying is that, like a number of Islamic NGOs whose do-gooder mission is often only a cover (although it's rare to have blatant proof, as it in the newspaper ad), the al-Rashid Trust has links with a terrorist organization, which itself is linked to al-Qaida. These links are not merely ideological but structural, forged in organizational and financial logic. The Trust claims that these links were severed the day after September 11. The “volunteer” I speak to even gives me the account numbers and the names on the Jaish accounts at the Allied Bank in the Binori district of Karachi. Except there is the aforementioned issue of the
Zarb-e-Momin
with their joint advertisement—send your donations . . . cut along the dotted line . . . Jaish and al-Rashid, common cause and same struggle.

Its newspapers. Al-Rashid has newspapers, real ones. A daily in Urdu,
Islam.
And a weekly, the
Zarb-e-Momin
, which is also published in Urdu, every Friday in two versions, paper and internet, and whose circulation, in Pakistan and Afghanistan combined, adds up to 150,000 copies for the paper edition alone. (Another version comes out in English with the title
Dharb-el-Momin
.) It so happens that
Zarb-e-Momin
, until 2000, was the central organ of the Taliban leaders. Since their fall, it has become one of the outlets—along with
Al-Hilal
, which is more linked to the Harkat ul-Mujahideen, and the monthly
Majallah al-Daawa
—for all the hacks who are to some degree nostalgic for the black order the newspaper advocated. And it's in
Zarb-e-Momin
, finally—and not, for instance, in the bimonthly
Jaish e-Mohammad
, supposedly the official paper of the party—that a man like Masood Azhar, boss of the Jaish, Omar's mentor, and high dignitary in the assassins' sect, has continually published his prison writings for the last eight years. What does this have to do with humanitarian aid? Is it the role of an NGO to publish, every Friday, appeals to murder Jews, Hindus, Christians, Westerners?

Its finances. They are opaque, naturally. They are opaque neither more nor less than those of most NGOs, Islamist or not, and it is therefore very difficult to calculate how much of its resources come from individuals or states, from Pakistan or some country in the Middle East, from a big private donor in South Africa or Indonesia. But several things are certain. Here's one: it is the al-Rashid Trust, on the strength of its international contacts and also, I imagine, its competence in these fields, that manages the foreign holdings of a certain number of terrorist organizations, such as the Jaish or the Lashkar e-Toiba. Here's another: until November 2001, that is to say until the fall of the Taliban, the Trust systematically shared bank accounts in the Afghan branches of the Pakistani Habib Bank with another NGO, the Wafa Khairia, which has the distinction of having been founded by Osama bin Laden himself, as a sign of gratitude for the hospitality offered to him by Mullah Omar and his relatives. A charitable organization functioning as a banker for criminals? People who swear that all they care about is caring for the dispossessed, who are themselves associated with one of the al-Qaida organizations? Curiouser and curiouser . . .

And then, even more curious, and confusing to boot, this singular mix: in 2000–2001 al-Rashid organizes military training sessions in Afghanistan; its founder Rashid Ahmed holds active positions in the leadership of three terrorist groups, the Harkat ul-Mujahideen, the Edara ul-Rashid, and of course the Jaish, all involved in terrorist actions in both Kashmir, and, increasingly, in Pakistan itself; and it's Rashid Ahmed who appoints Masood Azhar “emir” of the Taliban in Kashmir and thereby launches his career; it's Rashid Ahmed yet again who, at the beginning of 2000, promises in the Trust's newspaper, a 2 million rupee reward to whomever can furnish proof that he has managed to “send to hell” an infidel guilty of killing a martyr. And I mention, only as a reminder, the revelations of the
Washington Times
on 6 November 2001, stating that the Trust had been for years in the middle of a gigantic arms-smuggling operation benefitting the Taliban: light or medium-weight arms arriving as contraband in the Karachi port, concealed under the tarpaulins on trucks meant to be carrying flour and food aid, and then speeding to Quetta and Kandahar, where they were distributed to the international militias of Allah's army—humanitarian aid as the fuel for paramilitary activities.

For me, it is obvious: Al-Rashid is a cog in the al-Qaida machine.

Far from being helped, and financed, by al-Qaida, al-Rashid instead finances the terrorist organization itself through its collection network.

And that is the fact that we must accept: Daniel Pearl was tortured and murdered in a house belonging to a fake charity organization that serves as a mask for Osama bin Laden.

CHAPTER 2
THE MOSQUE OF THE TALIBAN

The “seminary” of Binori Town.

The grand
madrasa
, the heart of Sunni and, in particular, Deobandi, spirituality, where some of the Taliban dignitaries were educated and where, we remember, Omar spent one of his last nights before the kidnapping.

For a long time now, I've wanted to go inside.

I requested permission through the embassy—rejected.

From the police—rejected as well. The
madrasa
, they told me, is surrounded by the minority Shiite neighborhood of Karachi, which is engaged in open war against the Sunnis. So there are security problems, the risk of deadly assault. Wasn't it right there in the heart of the city, at the corner of Jamshed and Jinnah Roads, that Maulana Habibullah Mukhtar, the rector of the mosque, was shot point blank with four companions by a motorcycle squad of Shiite extremists a few years ago?

I tried to simply walk in, like a tourist coming to admire the place and passing by the adjoining grand mosque—turned back.

Finally, I talked to Abdul about it—don't even think about it! Very restricted place! As far as I know, no Western journalist has ever gone inside! You have to be Pakistani, know a teacher, work for an Urdu paper with jihadist tendencies, or, even better, go through the bureau of donations— otherwise, it's forbidden.

In short, I had finally given up. Every time I passed by, I was reduced to speculating about the mysterious world hidden behind the high walls, the barred doors, and the rust-colored iron grilles, and about Omar's reasons for going inside there twice before the crime. That is, until the morning of 24 November, the day of the great Shiite demonstration commemorating the death of the fourth caliph Ali, when, paradoxically, the riot inspired by this occasion nearly every year in this part of town gave me the opportunity I had been waiting for.

The wave of the faithful surges along Jamshed Road. The merchants have all lowered their security gates. Cordons of policemen, rifles at their sides, are keeping a watchful eye all along the avenue. There are tires burning on the sidewalks. The most fanatic of the participants are lacerating their faces and torsos, as is often the case at Shiite mass demonstrations. The others, long-haired dervishes with wild, bloodshot eyes, are shouting murderous epithets at their Sunni neighbors, then suddenly, to a man, they stop and begin chanting incoherent litanies full of, I am told, blood, vengeance, and martyrdom. My car is blocked. The mob, realizing that I am a foreigner, begins to violently rock the vehicle. One man, the victim of his own frenzied slogans, foaming at the mouth, his face bathed in sweat, brandishes a rock at the windshield. And so I get out. On the pretext of the mounting violence, I slip away from my driver, Abdul, and the official minder the ministry insisted on assigning me in light of the mood of the day. I thread my way through the crowd to the cross street, Gokal Street. In the crush, waving my expired diplomatic passport, I ask for passage through the cordon of terribly nervous policemen who are trying to block the way between the demonstrators and a hundred or so Sunnis who have just emerged from the
madrasa
, fists raised defiantly, shouting their own anti-Shiite slogans. The police let me pass and, without even knowing where I'm headed, I end up right at a door on the south side of the
madrasa
.

“What do you want?” asks the orderly, a consumptive-looking little man with a bit of a goiter, huge eyes in his moon face looking me up and down with distrust.

Behind him, in the interior courtyard, I see a group of armed men, mullahs, to judge by their turbans. Better armed, actually, than the policemen—strange for a
madrasa
. . .

“I am a French diplomat,” I say, holding out my passport and one of the calling cards I had printed, quite illegally, at the time of my Afghan mission. “Bernard-Henri Lévy,” it reads, “Special Representative of the French President.”

“I am a diplomat, and I would like to see the Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, the rector of the seminary.”

The man examines the card. Leafs through the passport. Looks at me. Goes back to the passport. Behind me, a loud speaker squawks: “Don't take the law into your own hands, stay in the mosque.” The chief of the patrol of mullahs advances towards me, Kalashnikov in hand, ready to intervene. I'm expecting them to throw me out at any moment— “Diplomat or not, infidels are not allowed here . . . You can just go back and rub elbows with those bastard Shiite demonstrators . . . ” But, is it the passport? The calling card? The fact that I don't introduce myself as a journalist? The riot? Whatever it is, the little orderly motions for me to follow him into the interior courtyard, which is vaster than I had imagined, and a group of the faithful gawk at me. From there into a waiting room, empty except for some rope matting, and a moped in one corner.

“Have a seat,” says the little orderly, “I'll be back.”

And off he goes, my passport in hand, shuffling along with a sort of Chaplinesque gait, while the apprentice
ulémas
peer through the window to look at me. Most of them are very young, with scraggly adolescent beards, thrilled to see a foreigner, crowding and elbowing each other, bursting out laughing, with their black and red
keffiehs
on their shoulders. They look like Yemenis.

The man comes back after about five minutes. Grave. Self-conscious. “Very honor-due-to-our-foreign-guest.”

“Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai cannot receive you. Nor Doctor Abdul Razzak Sikandar. But one of the doctor's assistants is here. He will see you.”

As extraordinary as it seems, my strategy has worked. And we're off again, one following the other, he with his penguin waddle and me opening my eyes wide, inside the Forbidden City of Karachi.