By MATTHEW MOFFETT
Staff Reporter of T
HE WALL
STREET J
OURNAL
KHATTAR, Pakistan -- In this tiny village of weary-looking goats and scraggly orange trees, posters advertise a memorial service: "Rashid Sultan, martyr in the jihad."
Mr. Sultan, 22 years old, was one of apparently thousands of Pakistanis who volunteered to wage a "holy war" in neighboring Afghanistan alongside Taliban militants. "Rashid left without ever telling me he was going to the front," says his grandfather, Haji Matloob. A few days ago, Mr. Matloob received word that his grandson died in a U.S. bombing raid near the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, formerly a Taliban stronghold.
The battlefield demise of the Taliban, who have harbored alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, has left many Pakistani communities in mourning. That poses a delicate problem for Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf -- though one that is not without a silver lining.
Gen. Musharraf decided to support the U.S.-led coalition against the Taliban, turning his back on Pakistan's former allies. But another U.S. ally in the war on terror, the Afghanistan's anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, which has done most of the on-the-ground fighting there, is extremely hostile toward Pakistanis, especially those in the Taliban's foreign legion.
Human-rights groups have reported the massacre of about 100 foreign fighters, mostly Pakistanis, in a school in Mazar-e-Sharif. Over the weekend, hundreds more foreign fighters were killed after they smuggled in weapons and staged an armed rebellion in a Northern Alliance prison.
"It can become a political issue if the number of people massacred is very large," says Rifaat Hussain, chairman of the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. He says Pakistanis will ask whether "this bloodshed came as a result of a shift in foreign policy."
But Mr. Hussain and others note that the debacle in Afghanistan may help the Western-leaning Gen. Musharraf in one way: by helping to discredit Pakistan's religious political parties and schools, breeding grounds for holy warriors. "The defeat of the project of self-appointed holy warriors ... has pulled the rug from under the feet of their Pakistani ideologues," wrote columnist Imtiaz Alam, in the Islamabad newspaper the News. "The blowback is so widespread that there is no one to respond to the frustrating calls of [jihadists] on the streets of Pakistan, once filled with earthshaking slogan-mongering."
U.S. and Pakistani officials deny reports that Pakistan's government was providing airlifts home for some Pakistani fighters trapped by the Northern Alliance. Mr. Hussain says it is conceivable that Pakistan's intelligence service wanted some of the jihadists returned to Pakistan, though he says he has no specific information on it. "You have some people who are Pakistan intelligence assets, and they may have been working with the Taliban," he says.
Some Pakistanis are clearly furious over the fate of the country's lost warriors. At the Jamia Haqqania mosque in Islamabad, an attendant at the door screams and shakes his fist at a foreign reporter. He says he knows personally of four people who have been killed by the Northern Alliance. In the city of Rawalpindi, Ashfar Taneer anxiously awaits news from his son Abdullah, who enlisted in late September. But he still supports his son's decision: "He left for Afghanistan to fight against the evil forces."
Here in Mr. Sultan's village of Khattar, the air is one of resignation. "Rashid was always sad because he saw no financial future here," says his grandfather.
Mr. Sultan's life story indicates something about the circumstances that produce holy warriors. He was an orphan with five years' education. "All he ever did was read the Quran," says Mr. Matloob. There is little work here aside from odd jobs on parched farms. Mr. Sultan was inspired to head off to war by the preaching of a mullah in Islamabad.
Mr. Matloob says he hasn't received his grandson's body, and doesn't expect to.
Write to Matthew Moffett at matt.moffett@wsj.com