Reviewer, Read Carefully

Ajai Shukla's reviewof my book, The True Face Of Jehadis: Inside Pakistan's Network Of Terror,is full of factual errors and inaccuracies. Perhaps Shukla did not have time toread the book carefully, and has consequently drawn some hasty conclusions.

He states: "It makes good marketing sense to update and publish in Englishthe handbook on jehadis that Amir Mir had published in Urdu some yearsago." Let me enlighten Shukla that The True Face of Jehadis hasn'tbeen published in Urdu. It was first published by Mashal Books in Pakistan inSeptember 2004 -- in English and not in Urdu. It seems Shukla hasconfused Amir Mir with Amir Rana, the author of an Urdu book on jehadis, A toZ of the Jehadi Organisations. which was subsequently translated to English.

Shukla further writes: "The more serious problem lies in Amir Mir's broaderanalysis. Even if one accepts the somewhat shallow thesis that the anti-Sovietstruggle in Afghanistan lies at the root of jehadi terrorism in the region,there is little to support the argument that the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 leftPakistan with thousands of jehadis on its hands with no place to send themexcept Kashmir".

No such conclusion has been made by me in the book. It seems the reviewer istrying to put words into my mouth. The third paragraph of Page 3 of my bookstates clearly: "Following the withdrawal of the Soviet occupation forcesfrom Afghanistan in 1989, the CIA was also withdrawn from the scene, leaving itto Pakistan to deal with the mess of Islamic militancy created by the Americans.What remained after the Soviet withdrawal was a huge force of highly motivated,militarily trained Islamic militants, who were now looking for new pastures.Since there was no dearth of funds from domestic as well as foreign sources,Pakistan had at its disposal all the means required for the pursuit of promotingand sustaining Islamic militancy and utilising the same to become one of theleading lights of the Islamic world".

Shukla goes on: "As a deeper analysis would show, the withdrawal of theSoviets did not mean the end of fighting in Afghanistan or a mass laying off ofthe mujahideen. And large numbers of Pakistani fighters were pumped into J&Konly after Islamabad decided in 1991 to sideline the Jammu & KashmirLiberation Front (JKLF) by strengthening the Hizbul Mujahideen".

Had Shukla read the book carefully, he would have noticed what I wrote in thesecond paragraph of Page 5 of my book: "By the end of 1989, most of thePakistan-based jehadi outfits and the graduates of the Afghan war were joiningthe jehad in Jammu & Kashmir. What began as an indigenous and secularmovement for liberation, soon became an increasingly Islamist crusade to bringall of Kashmir under the Pakistani control. Within a couple of years, manyPakistan-based militant groups, especially the Hizbul Mujahideen, gained moreprominence and significance as compared to the Jammu & Kashmir LiberationFront and other secular Kashmiri groups that believed in political struggle toachieve their goal of liberation".

Shukla then goes on to write: "When Mir declares that Mohammad Jameel,the fidayeen bomber waiting to ram General Pervez Musharraf's car in Rawalpindi,made and received 109 phone calls in 30 minutes (page 13), it strainscredulity".

The information about the calls made and received by the suicide bomber 30minutes before the attack was actually retrieved by the investigators from thememory card of his cell phone. To give a clear picture of what had happened onthe day of the bombings, let me reproduce the second paragraph of the book onpage 13, from which Shukla has quoted just one sentence:

"On December 25, 2003, in the half-hour before Mohammad Jameel ended hislife, he was a busy man. As he sat in a pickup truck loaded with deadlyexplosives, he made and received no fewer than 109 calls on his cell phone,talking, at least in some cases, to accomplices in his effort to incinerate thekhaki President of Pakistan. Jameel might have assumed that the evidence he wascreating would disintegrate in the blast he planned for Musharraf. If he did, hewas wrong. Not only did he and a second car bomber fail to kill Musharraf intheir December 25 attempt, but also the memory card of Jameel's cell phone,which investigators found intact amid the detritus of the blasts, had ledauthorities to dozens of suspected collaborators".

Shukla states: "Footnotes would have given the book a flavour of truth butwhere they are provided, they are somewhat unconvincing". Shukla shouldhave noticed that there are no footnotes at all in the book, what to talk ofbeing "somewhat unconvincing". Instead of giving footnotes at the endof every page or chapter, I have tried to mention the original sources ofinformation there and then in the same paragraph. This has been done to make thereading of my book more convenient. Even otherwise, footnotes is an aspectcommon to academic books, not to those written by journalists.

Shukla further writes: "The True Face of Jehadis is more a quickreference handbook, a variety of assertions pigeon-holed into a large number ofsections. For the casual reader or for a student flitting through the Jehad 101course, this is most convenient. For those expecting a deeper look at terrorismin South Asia, there are two serious problems in this book. The first of them isthat, unlike some others in this genre, Amir Mir is long on accounts and shorton references".

Here, I would like to quote a paragraph from the preface of my book, written bya noted Pakistani scholar Mr Khaled Ahmed: "Amir Mir is perhaps the onlyPakistani journalist who has made an effort to bring together the published andunpublished information about the jehadi personalities from Pakistan linked toal-Qaeda. He has also juxtaposed the information published abroad and the dataavailable in Pakistan from the heretofore-ignored jehadi publications. Amir Mirhas produced a mosaic of information based on what has come to light fromsources in the Arab world, as communicated by the journalists and intelligenceagents of the West; and what has appeared as deadpan news in the Pakistanipress. This kind of work was needed in Pakistan. It is not a book of analysis oropinion; it simply puts together the mosaic of reportage in such a way that itcreates a narrative that might yield grounds for analysis".

Either Shukla was prejudiced or, as the arguments above prove, did not havethe caliber and time to read my book.