In the Realm of the Angels.(Ehsan ul-Haq)(Brief Article)

Maj. Ehsan ul-Haq would be outraged if anyone called him a terrorist. For 10 days every month, the former Pakistan Army officer runs a garment factory in Lahore, a business profitable enough to keep him and his family in luxury. On the other 20 days, he commands a camp for fundamentalist Muslim guerrillas on his country's side of the line that divides the contested state of Kashmir between Pakistan and India. The Indians call Ehsan and his militiamen terrorists, but the 50-year-old ex-officer says he is on a jihad, a crusade to protect Muslims from their Indian oppressors. He is waging a holy war, fighting for Allah under Allah's rules.

Ehsan came to the jihad in a roundabout way. He served in Pakistan's Army for 20 years, training with the elite Special Services Group along with Pervez Musharraf, now a general and Pakistan's ruler. ("He is a very brilliant strategist and very determined," Ehsan says of his former colleague. "But he is a secularist, so he is weak.") In the mid- 1960s, Ehsan was trained by American Green Berets in Pakistan. "They taught us to plan and execute maneuvers, given whatever resources we have," he says. "But they only believe in three dimensions: whatever we can see, we believe. When you are fighting for Allah, you believe in the unseen."

In 1986, Ehsan volunteered for service in Afghanistan. There he fought the Soviet invaders alongside the Islamic mujahedin--a cause encouraged and aided by the United States. Now, to Ehsan and his supporters, the struggle against Indian control of predominantly Muslim Kashmir is more of the same. "What is the difference between the jihad in Afghanistan and the jihad in Kashmir?" asks Hafiz Saeed, head of the Lashkar-i- Taiba, one of the largest groups ...