IHT : Taliban leader urges halt to violence and Pakistan government talks peace with key tribe

Taliban leader urges halt to violence and Pakistan government talks peace with key tribe

The Associated Press | April 25, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: A Taliban commander wanted in the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has urged his followers to halt violence as Pakistan's new government steps up peace talks in hopes of turning a rising tide of Islamic militancy.

Followers of Baitullah Mehsud, considered Pakistan's top Taliban commander, distributed fliers in his name around the lawless region on the Afghan border telling his supporters not to break a ban on acts of "hostility."

A copy of the flier obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday warned that those who disobeyed the order would be "strung upside down in public and punished."

Pakistan has enjoyed a monthlong respite from a wave of devastating suicide bombings blamed on Islamic militants that included the December assassination of Bhutto. The army and the militants have been observing an unofficial cease-fire for more than a month.

The lull follows the election of a new government which has vowed to negotiate with militants who renounce violence and sought to distance itself from the strong-arm tactics of U.S.-backed President Pervez Musharraf, whose influence is fading.

Zahid Khan, a senior official in one of the parties of the ruling coalition, said Thursday that government envoys were in talks with elders of the Mahsud tribe in South Waziristan. Mehsud is a member of the tribe, though Khan said there were no direct talks with him.

Khan gave no details about the possible terms of any agreement. Tribal elders could not be reached for comment Thursday.

"We will ensure that all people from this tribe respect and abide by an agreement which we might reach with them," Khan said.

Maulvi Umar, a spokesman for Mehsud, told AP that militants across the region were ready for peace if the government met their demands to withdraw the army and release militant prisoners.

U.S. officials have voiced some support for the government's peace initiative, while urging the government to exclude Taliban and al-Qaida figures suspected of orchestrating attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan — and perhaps plotting major terrorist attacks in the West.

Mehsud is wanted for a string of suicide attacks in Pakistan and the previous government has accused him of Bhutto's assassination in December. He has reportedly denied involvement.

He exerts considerable influence in tracts of South Waziristan. Most of his followers are believed to be fellow tribesmen but allegedly include some foreign militants.

Mehsud has not been widely accused, however, of involvement in attacks on U.S. and NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan.

Ikram Sehgal, a security analyst, said the government is trying to win over tribal leaders and smaller armed groups angered at Musharraf's deployment of the army in the region in order to isolate hard-liners such as Mehsud.

"The government is feeling its way forward to see whether a local arrangement can be made with militants and sign off on a deal that can separate them from the terrorists per se," Sehgal said.

"Whether this policy is prudent, carefully devised and can be successful, it's too early to tell."

Associated Press writers Ishtiaq Mahsud, Riaz Khan and Stephen Graham contributed to this report.

Dawn : Pentagon says US military not involved in Pakistan missile strike

Pentagon says US military not involved in Pakistan missile strike

AFP | November 2, 2007

WASHINGTON, Nov 2 (AFP) - The Pentagon said Friday it had no information that the US military was involved in a missile strike in Pakistan.

“There is no information this morning that the US military was involved in this incident,” said Bryan Whitman, adding that he spoke only for the Defense Department and not other US government agencies.

Two missiles struck a pro-Taliban militant camp in North Waziristan, killing at least 10 militants, according to residents of the village.

(Posted @ 19:50 PST)

Dawn : Missile attack on Pakistan militant camp kills nine

Missile attack on Pakistan militant camp kills nine

AFP | November 2, 2007

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan -- A missile strike destroyed an insurgent hideout in Pakistan's North Waziristan region at a house once owned by the late military chief of the Taliban, killing nine people, witnesses and sources said.

Residents and local sources said drones flew over the site in the village of Danday Darpakhel, just about two kms from Miramshah, the main town in North Waziristan, before two missiles hit the site, one of which exploded and destroyed the house formerly owned by Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah who was killed in May in southern Afghanistan.

Drones are usually operated by US-led forces in Afghanistan and were used in a failed January 2006 attack on Al-Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Pakistan's tribal region.

“There was a roar in the sky. We feared it was an air raid but we saw no jets. Then there was a huge blast,” Noor Mohammad, a student at a religious school near the main town of Miranshah, told AFP.

Local sources said at least nine militants were killed and 12 others wounded in the blast.

Two foreign militants -- usually associated with Al-Qaeda in the tribal regions -- were among the dead, they said, quoting injured rebels.

They said the house was used as a training camp and explosives store by insurgents loyal to Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of Pakistani-based Taliban militants who have been blamed for a string of attacks in this country.

“The blast was next to a defunct religious school formerly run by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a Taliban commander with a five-million-dollar bounty on his head who is said to be close to the regime's leader, Mullah Omar.

Pakistan's chief military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said his forces were not involved but added that local officials were checking the cause of the blast.

“(The) army has not fired any weapon in the area,” he told AFP.

The US-led coalition in Afghanistan said there was no activity reported on the Pakistani border, while the NATO-led ISAF said they had no information.

(Updated Posted @ 17:55 PST Updated @ 18:18 PST)

Dawn : U.S. strike kills at least 5 in Pakistan

U.S. strike kills at least 5 in Pakistan

Reuters | November 2, 2007

ISLAMABAD -- A missile attack launched by a U.S. drone aircraft on Friday killed at least five people and wounded several more near a madressah run by pro-Al Qaeda mujahideen in Pakistan's North Waziristan region, witnesses said.

“A drone was flying very low and fired the missile. It destroyed three houses,” a resident of Dandi Darpakheil village told Reuters.

Pakistan military does not possess drones, and U.S. does not usually acknowledge making any strikes either.

The latest explosion rocked Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan, two km away.

“It shook Miranshah. Many people came out of their shops in panic,” one witness said.

Six wounded men were admitted to Miranshah's main hospital.

Pakistan's military spokesman confirmed there had been no Pakistani action and offered no explanation for the cause of the explosion.

“I have heard there was an explosion in a house, but we didn't carry out any action,” Major-General Waheed Arshad said.

The sprawling religious school was founded by a veteran mujahideen commander, Jalaluddin Haqqani -- an old friend of Osama bin Laden.

There were unconfirmed reports earlier this year that the aging and infirm Haqqani had died, but his son Sirajuddin has emerged as a major militant leader in his place.

(Posted @ 17:55 PST)

Dawn : Missile strike kills at least 5 in Pakistan

Missile strike kills at least 5 in Pakistan

Reuters | November 2, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Nov 2 (Reuters) - A missile attack launched by a drone aircraft on Friday killed at least five people and wounded several more near a madressah in a village near the town of Miramshah in Pakistan's North Waziristan region, witnesses said.

“A drone was flying very low and fired the missile. It destroyed three houses,” a resident of Dandi Darpakheil village told Reuters, requesting anonymity.

The missile hit dwellings close to a sprawling religious school founded by a veteran mujahideen commander, Jalaluddin Haqqani.

The village is about two km from Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan, and residents said the explosion rocked the whole area.

“It shook (all of) Miranshah. Many people came out of their shops in panic,” one of the residents said.

Six wounded men were admitted to Miranshah's main hospital.

There were unconfirmed reports the aging Haqqani, an old friend of Osama bin Laden, had died earlier this year, but his son Sirajuddin has emerged as a major militant leader in his place.

Military officials were not immediately available for comments.

(Posted @ 17:45 PST)

BBC : 'Missile hit' on Pakistan village

'Missile hit' on Pakistan village

November 2, 2007

At least five people are reported to have been killed in a missile attack in Pakistan's North Waziristan region.

Local people say the missile was launched from an unmanned drone aircraft and that the dead were believed to be militants.

The Pakistan military says it was not involved in the incident in the village of Danday Darpakhel.

In Washington the Pentagon has denied that a US drone plane from Afghanistan was involved.

"Every indication was that there was no US military involvement in this activity that you've seen," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said, the Associated Press news agency reports.

Correspondents say that US forces based in Afghanistan have used drones in the past to attack militants in Pakistan.

'Human flesh'

"A drone was flying very low and fired the missile. It destroyed three houses," a villager told the Reuters news agency.

"I have seen human flesh scattered all over the area near the houses."

North and South Waziristan have been at the centre of fighting between the army and Taleban and al-Qaeda militants.

The Pakistan military has frequently denied giving permission for US forces to carry out strikes on its soil.

IHT : Pakistan militants killed in missile attack near Afghan border

Pakistan militants killed in missile attack near Afghan border

The Associated Press | November 2, 2007

MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan: A missile destroyed a suspected militant hide-out in northwestern Pakistan near the Afghan border Friday, killing 10 people inside and wounding 11, security officials said.

It was not clear who fired the missile that struck a compound in Danday village on the outskirts of Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region, an army official and two local security officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

U.S. missiles are suspected of having struck alleged militant hideouts in the past, but Washington insisted Friday there was no indication the American military was involved.

Residents in Miran Shah, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Afghan border, said they saw a low-flying drone an hour before hearing a loud explosion.

Militants blocked a reporter from approaching the building that was hit, and later took the dead and wounded from the scene, but it was not clear where, the two Pakistani officials said. They said the victims were rebel fighters.

Pakistani forces have been battling pro-Taliban militants in North Waziristan, the scene of heavy fighting last month. The country is also under U.S. pressure to crack down on militants in the region, amid concerns that al-Qaida could be regrouping there.

Spokesmen for Pakistan's army and government did not respond to calls seeking comment, but the army official confirmed the attack, although he would not say who had launched it.

"I saw a spy plane about one hour before the explosion," said local shop owner Arman Khan, adding that it came from the direction of the Afghan border. Two other residents had similar reports.

U.S. Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said he did not think the U.S. military launched the missile.

"There is no information this morning that would indicate that there was any U.S. military involvement," he said in Washington.

The CIA also has operated unmanned vehicles in the region. Asked if the missile could have been launched by another U.S. agency, Whitman said, "I only talk for the United States military."

In January 2006, missiles allegedly fired from a CIA Predator drone hit houses in Bajur, another tribal region near Afghanistan, targeting al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri and killing at least 13 people. Al-Zawahri was not in the area at the time, according to Pakistani intelligence officials.

The U.S. government never confirmed its involvement in that strike.

In December 2005, a suspected U.S. missile killed an Egyptian al-Qaida figure, Hamza Rabia, in North Waziristan. Pakistan's army claimed that Rabia died while making bombs at a home, where fragments of what appeared to be a missile were seen by local reporters.

Friday's missile attack came as U.S. Central Command chief Adm. William Fallon visited Pakistan. He met with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Geo TV network reported.

Reuters : Missile strike adds to Pakistan's complications

Missile strike adds to Pakistan's complications

By Simon Cameron-Moore | November 2, 2007

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani villagers said a missile strike hit houses near a madrasa founded by an old friend of Osama bin Laden's on Friday, killing at least five people.

They told Reuters a drone aircraft carried out the attack. The United States has carried out such operations in the past using drones, which Pakistan does not possess in its armory.

The Pentagon issued a swift denial the U.S. military had conducted a strike, though spokesman Bryan Whitman said he could not speak for U.S. intelligence agencies that also operate the pilotless aircraft.

A Pakistani military spokesman said he had heard there had been an explosion in a house but there had been no action by Pakistani forces.

The sprawling religious school or madrasa near Miranshah, the main town in the Waziristan tribal region, was founded by veteran mujahideen commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose ties to bin Laden go back to the 1980s jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

"A drone was flying very low and fired the missile. It destroyed three houses," a Dandi Darpakheil village resident told Reuters on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivities over U.S. operations in Pakistani territory.

Several other villagers corroborated his account.

"I saw human flesh scattered all over the area near the houses," the villager said.

The identity of the victims was not immediately known.

There were unconfirmed reports earlier this year that the aging and infirm Haqqani had died, but his son Sirajuddin has emerged as a major militant figure in his place.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan's internal security has deteriorated sharply in the past few months and the country is trembling from a wave of suicide attacks by al Qaeda-inspired militants.

Political uncertainties abound, with President Pervez Musharraf uncertain whether the Supreme Court will let him keep his re-election victory in parliament last month, because he ran while still army chief.

Pakistan was awash with rumors this week that General Musharraf, who came to power in a 1999 coup, might invoke emergency powers, declare martial law or put off a national election due in January that is supposed to transform the country into a civilian-led democracy.

Stung by criticism it was adding to a sense of instability, the court said on Friday it would reconvene on Monday and try to finish the case quickly, having earlier said it would take a break until November 12 -- just three days before Musharraf's current term is due to expire.

Investors are uneasy over the dicey political situation.

A timid recovery petered out and the Karachi Stock Exchange's benchmark index ended marginally down, having fallen almost three percent the previous day, in a week when there have been more downs than ups in what has been one of Asia's best performing markets.

AMERICAN FRIENDS

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told journalists traveling with her to Turkey that Washington opposed any authoritarian measures and wanted elections to go ahead.

"I think it would be quite obvious that the United States would not be supportive of extra-constitutional means," Rice said.

"Pakistan needs to prepare for and hold free and fair elections."

The missile strike in Waziristan coincided with a visit to Islamabad by the head of the U.S. Central Command Admiral William Fallon, for talks with Musharraf on Friday.

Paramilitary forces are also battling pro-Taliban militants in Swat, a valley in North West Frontier Province where around 180 people have perished in fighting over the past week.

Musharraf's alliance with the United States is a big reason many Pakistanis are fed up with him, but his popularity began to tank when he tried to sack the chief justice in March.

Adjourning on Friday, Justice Javed Iqbal defended the court's independence, after some government ministers raised the possibility of an emergency being declared if Musharraf received an adverse ruling.

"I want to make it clear that nobody on earth can dictate to this court," said Iqbal, who heads the 11-member bench hearing the challenges to Musharraf.

Most diplomats and analysts doubt whether Musharraf's re-election by parliament on October 6 will be ruled invalid by the court. The judges are more likely to bind him to future actions like getting his presidency endorsed by the next parliament.

He has already said he will quit as army chief if he's given a second term, and he's allowed one opposition leader, two-time prime minister Benazir Bhutto, back from self-imposed exile to lead her party into the national elections.

He's blocked Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister he ousted, from returning, despite the court's clearance for Sharif to come back.

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

AFP : Pakistan missile attack kills 10, militants parade troops

Pakistan missile attack kills 10, militants parade troops

November 2, 2007

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) — A missile strike on a pro-Taliban militant camp in Pakistan's tribal belt killed 10 people Friday, as rebels in another area paraded 48 men said to be troops captured during fierce clashes.

The unrest heightens pressure on President Pervez Musharraf, a key US ally in the 'war on terror,' to tackle Al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents cementing their grip over northwestern Pakistan and its troubled tribal belt.

Musharraf held talks with visiting US Central Command chief Admiral William Fallon in Islamabad on Friday at about the same time as the missile attack in the Islamist stronghold of North Waziristan bordering Afghanistan.

Residents said drones flew over the village of Danday Darpakhel before two missiles hit, one of which destroyed a house formerly owned by Mullah Dadullah, the late Taliban military commander killed in Afghanistan in May 2007.

It was not clear who fired the missiles. Pakistan's army said it was not involved while the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, the only force known to operate drones in the area, said it was not aware of any activity.

"There was a roar in the sky, we feared it was an air raid but we saw no jets. Then there was a huge blast," Noor Mohammad, a student at a religious school in the region's nearby main town of Miranshah, told AFP.

Missile attacks have claimed the lives of several militants in Pakistan's volatile tribal belt. A US Predator drone targeted Al-Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in January 2006, killing several rebels but missing him.

Local sources said at least 10 militants were killed and 11 others wounded in Friday's blast. Two foreigners -- usually associated with Al-Qaeda in the tribal regions -- were among the dead, they said, quoting injured rebels.

They said the house was used as a training camp by insurgents loyal to Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of Pakistan-based Taliban militants who have been blamed for a string of suicide attacks that have killed 400 people since July.

In the latest incident a bomber struck an air force bus on Thursday, killing eight people, while a twin suicide attack on former premier Benazir Bhutto's homecoming on October 18 killed 139 people.

The violence in the lawless tribal belt has been spreading into 'mainland' Pakistan, with security forces clashing with followers of a pro-Taliban cleric calling for Islamic law in the northwestern tourist spot of Swat this week.

Masked rebels in Swat on Friday paraded 48 men who said they were paramilitary troops who had surrendered after their hilltop position was surrounded.

The Islamist fighters freed the men later Friday and gave each of them 500 rupees (eight dollars). Pakistani military and government spokesmen had earlier denied that any troops were captured.

"We had exhausted our rations and ammunition. We had no option but to surrender," one of the captured men, who did not give his name and like the others was not wearing his uniform, told reporters in the town of Charbagh.

Pakistan moved 2,500 troops into Swat last week to counter cleric Maulana Fazlullah, also known as "Mullah Radio" for his speeches on his private radio station, in which he calls for a holy war on the authorities.

Fazlullah, who runs a banned group that sent thousands of fighters into Afghanistan after the US-led invasion to topple the Taliban in late 2001, is demanding the imposition of strict Islamic Sharia law in Swat.

The militants have taken control of several villages in the scenic Swat Valley, which was once best known for its ancient Buddhist heritage and relics, and set up checkpoints.

The violence has fuelled fears that military ruler Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999, may impose an emergency or even martial law in the face of mounting political opposition and a hostile Supreme Court.

The court is due to rule in the coming two weeks on appeals against Musharraf's contested victory in an October 6 presidential vote.

WaPo : Pentagon says not involved in Waziristan strike

Pentagon says not involved in Waziristan strike

Reuters | November 2, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said the U.S. military did not carry out a missile strike on Friday that witnesses said killed at least five people near a religious school run by pro-al Qaeda mujahideen in Pakistan's Waziristan region.

"There was no indication that that was any U.S. military asset," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman after speaking with U.S. military officials in Afghanistan.

"Every indication was that there was no U.S. military involvement in this activity that you've seen," he said.

Asked if the strike could have been launched by aircraft owned by another U.S. agency, such as an intelligence agency, Whitman said he did not speak for other agencies.

"I only talk for the United States military," he said.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment.

Witnesses said a U.S. drone aircraft launched a missile on the religious school founded by an old friend of Osama bin Laden. The Pakistan military does not possess drones.

Times Online : 16 Pakistani soldiers die as militants step up revenge attacks

16 Pakistani soldiers die as militants step up revenge attacks

Times Online | July 18, 2007

Sixteen Pakistani soldiers have been killed in an ambush in a tribal area as militants step up their revenge attacks on government forces following the siege of the Red Mosque.

Rebel fighters set off a remote-controlled roadside bomb as a military convoy moved towards Miran Shah, the capital of North Waziristan, Pakistan's most lawless region. The attackers then opened fire on the convoy, killing 16 soldiers and wounding a further 14.

So far more than 130 people have died in a variety of revenge attacks orchestrated by Islamic militants since President Pervez Musharraf ordered troops to retake the Red Mosque in central Islamabad.

Many of the students who died in the retaking of the Red Mosque and its religious school, where militants and radical clerics were holding out, were from the tribal areas of Waziristan, and their deaths have increased the appetite among villagers in tribal areas to attack the Government.

Waziristan is located in North West Frontier Province on the mountainous Afghan border, whose remote inaccessibility has for long made it a stronghold for Taleban fighters, and a launching point for raids on either side of the border. It is believed to be where Osama bin Laden and the remnants of the al-Qaeda leadership are hiding.

Following the Red Mosque siege, militant leaders in North Waziristan last weekend scrapped the 10-month peace accord they had signed with the government and have since been launching a series of attacks.

Twenty-four soldiers died at the weekend, and three soldiers died yesterday when a suicide bomber struck a security check post. Also yesterday, 16 civilians died in Islamabad when a suicide bomber on a motorbike rode into a crowd of demonstrators protesting about General Musharraf's sacking of Pakistan's chief justice in March.

The collapse of General Musharraf's controversial ceasefire with the militants has added to the pressure on his embattled regime, already heavily criticised by moderates over the chief justice's removal. Until today he had spoken of trying to revive the ceasefire, but today it appeared that those hopes were dead.

“We are in direct confrontation with extremist forces. It is moderates versus extremists,” General Musharraf was quoted as saying by a top government official who attended a meeting today between the president and local media.

Zahid Hussain, Times correspondent in Islamabad, said that the Pakistan President had no choice but to take on the militants head-to-head.

"There is no going back for General Musharraf now," said Hussain.

"He is faced with this challenge and, particularly after the Red Mosque raid, he has no choice but to renew his fight against extremism. He has already moved forces to North West Frontier Province, and more troops have been sent in particular to Waziristan, which is the centre of tribal support for extremism."

The ceasefire's collapse has, however, come as a relief to Washington, where President Bush's counter-terrorism advisers condemned it in an intelligence report yesterday as a security disaster.

The National Intelligence Estimate said that the ceasefire had failed in its intended aim of draining support in the tribal regions for Islamic extremism. "It hasn't worked for Pakistan. It hasn't worked for the United States," commented Frances Fragos Townsend, the head of the White House's Homeland Security Council.

The report concluded that the US was losing ground on a number of fronts in the fight against al-Qaeda, and said that the terror organisation had strengthened significantly in the last two years. It cited General Musharraf's withdrawal from enforcing the law in tribal areas as the main reason why this had happened.

Ms Townsend said that there was frustration that al-Qaeda had succeded in rebuilding its infrastructure and its links to affiliates. The US military was focused in Iraq, she acknowledged, but the main threat of more terror attacks on the US emanated from the Pakistan tribal areas.

WaPo : Suicide Bombing Kills 24 Pakistani Soldiers

Suicide Bombing Kills 24 Pakistani Soldiers

By Griff Witte and Imtiaz Ali | Washington Post Foreign Service | July 15, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 14 -- A suicide blast killed 24 Pakistani troops in North Waziristan on Saturday, dealing a potentially critical blow to a controversial peace deal between the government and tribal elders in a region where al-Qaeda has been rapidly reorganizing.

The attack, in which an explosives-laden car rammed into a military convoy, injured an additional 29 troops, was considered one of the most devastating strikes against the Pakistani military in recent years.

The violence came amid heightened tension in northwestern Pakistan after the government raided the besieged Red Mosque in Islamabad last week and killed at least 75 militants. Since then, radical clerics have called for revenge. At least 53 people have died in a spate of attacks over the past two weeks, with Pakistani security forces taking heavy losses.

Saturday's attack occurred in an area where security forces and pro-Taliban fighters have technically agreed to a cease-fire. But the viability of that agreement was in question Saturday, and there were indications that both sides were girding for more violence. Thousands of troops rumbled into the border region, though the military said it had no specific plans to attack.

A purported spokesman for the Taliban in Pakistan said in an interview that the government should prepare to fight a full-scale guerrilla war unless it immediately withdraws troops from North Waziristan. The government had recently set up checkpoints in the area, which the Taliban considers a violation of the peace deal.

"We give the government a deadline till [Sunday] for closing all checkpoints and withdrawing its forces," Abdullah Farhad, the purported spokesman, said in a telephone interview. "Otherwise, the peace agreement will collapse and we will start our war against the government troops."

The government said that the checkpoints were necessary because the other side was not abiding by the terms of the agreement but that overall the deal remained operative.

"The deal is very much in place and will stay in place," said Tariq Azim Khan, the state minister for information. "These threats are only made to destabilize the area. The vast majority of people there are still supporting the peace deal."

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president who is considered a crucial U.S. counterterrorism ally, has consistently defended the agreement. His government has boasted that local tribesmen were aggressive this spring in ousting foreign fighters.

Khan said on Saturday that the North Waziristan deal should be a model for dealing with militancy in other parts of Pakistan. "There should be more deals like this," he said.

But as Khan spoke, the military appeared to be preparing for battle. Over the past several days, the army has been moving troops, vehicles and supplies into areas near Waziristan as part of a campaign Musharraf announced late last week to stamp out extremism. More than 20,000 soldiers have been brought into various trouble spots.

Musharraf is under intense U.S. pressure to do more to oust militants; he also faces stiff domestic challenges, both from hard-line religious leaders who consider him a pawn of Washington and from moderate forces that want a return to democratic, civilian rule in Pakistan.

The remote, semiautonomous tribal areas that line Pakistan's western border have been hotbeds of radicalism in recent years and major command centers for cross-border attacks on U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.

Waziristan in particular has become the suspected base for al-Qaeda operations in the region. Just last week, a senior U.S. intelligence official warned Congress that al-Qaeda appears "to be fairly well settled into the safe haven in the ungoverned spaces of Pakistan." Recently, senior U.S. officials have also said they believe the North Waziristan deal is not working.

The deal signed in September between the Pakistani government and North Waziristan's tribal leaders -- a group that included some Taliban fighters -- was intended to compel local tribal forces to police the area and expel foreign fighters on their own. In exchange, the Pakistani military agreed to return to its bases after five years of unrest in the region that claimed the lives of hundreds of soldiers.

But the deal has come under widespread scrutiny, with security analysts arguing it amounted to a capitulation to extremists. Since it was signed, violence has surged in Afghanistan, and the Taliban has instituted a severe version of Islamic law in many areas on the Pakistani side of the border.

"Today, the result is very much clear. The Taliban have established their own state," said Latif Afridi, a tribal elder and former legislator from the western city of Peshawar. "The east of Afghanistan has become a problem for the United States and NATO forces, and the west of Pakistan has become a problem for the Pakistani forces. Both have emerged as big quagmires."

The violence Saturday came as Qazi Hussain Ahmad, leader of a coalition of hard-line religious parties, announced he would resign from Parliament in protest over the Red Mosque raid. Ahmad has alleged that casualties in the mosque were much higher than the government has admitted.

Ali reported from Peshawar, Pakistan.

NYT : Musharraf Defends Raid that Ended Red Mosque Siege

Musharraf Defends Raid that Ended Red Mosque Siege

By SALMAN MASOOD | Published: July 13, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 12 — President Pervez Musharraf on Thursday defended the raid on the Red Mosque here, which ended Wednesday, as necessary, prompted by intransigent militants who had “challenged the writ of the government.” As relatives buried the dead from the siege, three suicide bombers struck in the country’s north.

“We vow that we won’t let any mosque or madrasa be misused like the Red Mosque,” General Musharraf said in a television address Thursday evening, his first since the raid. “Wherever there is fundamentalism and extremism we have to finish that, destroy that.”

He said he ordered the military strike after negotiations failed and the ringleader of the rebellion, a militant 43-year-old cleric named Abdur Rashid Ghazi, demanded amnesty for those inside, including foreign fighters. The Red Mosque and Mr. Ghazi had long enjoyed state backing, but had lately become a festering sore in the heart of the capital.

All told, the eight-day siege at the Red Mosque, known here as the Lal Masjid, left at least 87 people dead, including Mr. Ghazi and 11 members of the Pakistani special forces who penetrated the sprawling mosque compound early Tuesday, military officials said. The military said its forces went from building to building, and then room to room, battling a small army of Islamic militants who had turned the complex into a well-armed garrison.

The siege was a watershed confrontation between General Musharraf and the religious radicals who have blossomed in his country. Their influence has steadily spread to cities from the remote tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan, where the Taliban and Al Qaeda are believed to have made a home.

Not surprisingly, the most bristling reaction has come from there. A suicide bomber blew himself up on Thursday in front of the offices of the administrator of Miramshah, the regional headquarters of the restive North Waziristan tribal region, killing three other people and wounding two, officials said. The bomber first scuffled with a gatekeeper, then pulled out a pistol and fired shots at him, an official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the attack. The guard and two other employees died on the spot, and two others were wounded.

Three police officials were killed when two men rammed an explosives-laden car into a police patrol vehicle in a town called Swat. The attackers died in the explosion.

On Tuesday, protesters attacked two Western aid agencies in the North-West Frontier Province. Two days before that, three Chinese residents were shot to death.

One important question remained unanswered Thursday: How many of those killed in the mosque siege were fighters and how many civilians held against their will? The government had said up to 60 fighters had holed up inside with an untold number of hostages, many of them women and children who had been students at the schools run by the mosque leaders.

The military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, said six bodies of women had been found in the ruins. “We suspect the women were held there against their will and their bodies were burned,” he said.

It is not yet clear whether women may have been among the fighters as well. The Red Mosque contained a seminary for women and girls, whose students made up a Taliban-style moral police brigade that had spent the last several months harassing video shop owners and carrying out abductions. In late June, they kidnapped six Chinese women and a Chinese man from an acupuncture clinic that also provided massages that they claimed was a brothel.

General Arshad said that 76 bodies had been pulled out after two days of fighting, including the corpse of a man in the women’s seminary who the general said appeared to have blown himself up.

Hundreds of students came out of the mosque as the siege began, some of whom were initially detained and then released. Earlier in the week, a spokesman told reporters that 86 men and women, and 30 children “came out” of the compound during the two days of fighting, but gave no further information about the nature of their involvement, except to say that they were being “screened.” Several female students were released to their families Wednesday and Thursday.

The ringleader of the rebellion, Mr. Ghazi, was buried in the family’s ancestral village in eastern Punjab Province on Thursday. Reuters reported that angry mourners tore open the funeral shroud to confirm that the corpse was his.

On Thursday evening, with sandalwood burning to hide the stench of bodies, about 200 men and women gathered here around freshly dug graves in Islamabad. “If a religious scholar is present, please step forward,” one man said, asking for someone to lead a funeral prayer for an unidentified man. A cleric in the crowd complied.

Grief quickly turned to anger at the government. People accused the military of playing down the death toll. “Having a beard is now a crime under Musharraf,” said Arshad Ali Sheikh, 38, a businessman from Islamabad. “Musharraf has done this to please America.” Those gathered around him nodded.

Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan.

NYT : Leader of Pakistan Mosque Vows to Fight

Leader of Pakistan Mosque Vows to Fight

By CARLOTTA GALL | Published: July 9, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 8 — Tensions were rising Sunday inside and outside the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, here, under siege by security forces now for six days over its militant leadership. A colonel leading a special forces unit was killed early Sunday, and government officials said that militants had taken charge inside and had shot students who tried to leave.

After comments by Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, that the militants should surrender or be prepared to die, the leader of the mosque, Abdur Rashid Ghazi, retorted that he preferred martyrdom.

In comments published in newspapers on Sunday, Mr. Ghazi, who has campaigned to have Islamic law enforced in Pakistan, said he hoped their deaths would bring about an Islamic revolution in Pakistan. “We have firm belief in God that our blood will lead to a revolution,” he said.

Armed militants have taken over control of the mosque from Mr. Ghazi, said the religious affairs minister, Ijaz-ul Haq. “Ghazi is no longer in control,” Agence France-Presse quoted him as saying. “The hard-core militants are in control of the mosque.”

Among them were “terrorists who are wanted within and outside Pakistan,” he said. “These terrorists have links with Arabs.”

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said there would be no relaxation of the pressure on the militants to surrender and release the women and children from among the students from religious schools they are believed to be holding inside. The interior minister, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, said that security forces were trying to aid the escape of students in the mosque.

The siege began after the mosque leaders used students to carry out a series of raids and sit-ins to press for their interpretation of Islamic law. For families waiting for news of students still trapped inside the mosque complex, the growing dangers of the siege were a torment.

“My daughter is missing — I don’t know if she is alive or dead,” said Manzur Ahmed, an old man with a white beard and patterned prayer cap on his head, trembling as he spoke. “I am extremely worried. My heart is aching.”

He said he had traveled here from his home in Bahawalpur, in southern Punjab Province, after his daughter, Sumaya Tabbasum, 19, called him on Thursday morning from inside the mosque. “She was very worried, and she was saying, ‘Father, please pray to God, Father, please pray to God, Father, please pray to God,’ ” he said.

Security forces, who had been accompanying families to the mosque to be reunited with their children, appear to have stopped the practice after one group was fired upon on Friday by militants inside the mosque. Mr. Ahmed said security officials had turned him away, saying it was too dangerous.

Hundreds of students emerged in the first days during lulls in the shooting, but only two students managed to come out of the mosque on Sunday, officials said.

Another man, Misraddin, from the Pakistani-controlled part of Kashmir, said his niece was still inside the complex. Her brother had been shot in the foot by militants when he had approached the mosque two days ago in a group with 10 other civilians seeking their relatives. “They shot from inside the mosque; they did not want to let the students come out,” the uncle said.

Separately, gunmen shot and killed three Chinese men and wounded a fourth in an attack in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Sunday, news agencies reported. The men were workers making three-wheeled auto-rickshaws. The motive for the attack was not clear, but Chinese citizens have been among the targets of Islamist militants.

After students from the mosque abducted seven Chinese women from a massage parlor two weeks ago, the Chinese government, a close economic ally of Pakistan, pressed Pakistan to do more to protect its citizens.

In Islamabad on Sunday, relatives gathered at a sports stadium to try to find out news as the government prepared to release the first male students, all of whom have been detained since they began leaving the mosque compound five days ago. The first 152 — all under age 18 — were released Sunday after being held in a jail in Rawalpindi.

Most parents were critical of the mosque leaders, saying they had endangered their children’s lives. “We think the culprit is Maulana Abdul Aziz,” said one father, referring to the leader of the Red Mosque complex, the elder brother of Mr. Ghazi, who was caught last week trying to escape dressed like a woman in a burqa.

“We did not think Aziz had another agenda,” said Zafar Iqbal, 58, a former policeman from Rawalpindi. “Please make it clear that the children have been wronged.”

He added in disgust, “He should be shot, the maulana,” using a title for a teacher or leader.

Yet he and other parents said the government should negotiate with the leaders of the mosque to prevent damage to a holy site and to secure the release of the remaining students.

“I sent my son here to learn Urdu, but to study, not to fight, and not to enter a confrontation with the government,” said Malik Muhammad Ayub, a bearded elder from the tribal region of South Waziristan, where there also has been heavy fighting between Islamist militants and the government in recent months. His grandson, Fez Muhammad, 17, was among those expected to be released at the stadium.

“I am Muslim and we want Shariah law in this country,” he said, referring to Islamic law. “They are good scholars in that mosque, but in the last days I think they were rather aggressive and they should have negotiated with the government.”

He also said the government should negotiate an end to the conflict rather than using military force. “Fighting is never a solution, and you should always enter into negotiations,” he said.

The students who were released Sunday evening were in an excited mood, chattering together and rushing in and out of a series of makeshift bedrooms inside the stadium. They said that Mr. Aziz, the mosque leader, had told them they were free to leave Wednesday, after the first day of fighting.

“There was firing and we did not have any weapons,” said Shabir Ahmed, 17, from Kohistan in northern Pakistan, explaining why he chose to leave. “There were many in bunkers who wanted to fight.”

Asked if he supported those still fighting the government, he answered yes without hesitation.

But the students also said that the government should try to make peace rather than fight its own people. “The government should solve this through negotiation, because Muslims are dying on both sides,” Mr. Ahmed said. “It’s not a good thing for Muslims to fight Muslims.”

NYT : U.S. Aborted Raid on Qaeda Chiefs in Pakistan in ’05

U.S. Aborted Raid on Qaeda Chiefs in Pakistan in ’05

By MARK MAZZETTI | Published: July 8, 2007

WASHINGTON, July 7 — A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.

The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations.

But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning.

Mr. Rumsfeld decided that the operation, which had ballooned from a small number of military personnel and C.I.A. operatives to several hundred, was cumbersome and put too many American lives at risk, the current and former officials said. He was also concerned that it could cause a rift with Pakistan, an often reluctant ally that has barred the American military from operating in its tribal areas, the officials said.

The decision to halt the planned “snatch and grab” operation frustrated some top intelligence officials and members of the military’s secret Special Operations units, who say the United States missed a significant opportunity to try to capture senior members of Al Qaeda.

Their frustration has only grown over the past two years, they said, as Al Qaeda has improved its abilities to plan global attacks and build new training compounds in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which have become virtual havens for the terrorist network.

In recent months, the White House has become increasingly irritated with Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, for his inaction on the growing threat of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

About a dozen current and former military and intelligence officials were interviewed for this article, all of whom requested anonymity because the planned 2005 mission remained classified.

Spokesmen for the Pentagon, the C.I.A. and the White House declined to comment. It is unclear whether President Bush was informed about the planned operation.

The officials acknowledge that they are not certain that Mr. Zawahri attended the 2005 meeting in North Waziristan, a mountainous province just miles from the Afghan border. But they said that the United States had communications intercepts that tipped them off to the meeting, and that intelligence officials had unusually high confidence that Mr. Zawahri was there.

Months later, in early May 2005, the C.I.A. launched a missile from a remotely piloted Predator drone, killing Haitham al-Yemeni, a senior Qaeda figure whom the C.I.A. had tracked since the meeting.

It has long been known that C.I.A. operatives conduct counterterrorism missions in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Details of the aborted 2005 operation provide a glimpse into the Bush administration’s internal negotiations over whether to take unilateral military action in Pakistan, where General Musharraf’s fragile government is under pressure from dissidents who object to any cooperation with the United States.

Pentagon officials familiar with covert operations said that planners had to consider the political and human risks of undertaking a military campaign in a sovereign country, even in an area like Pakistan’s tribal lands, where the government has only tenuous control. Even with its shortcomings, Pakistan has been a vital American ally since the Sept. 11 attacks, and the militaries of the two countries have close ties.

The Pentagon officials said tension was inherent in any decision to approve such a mission: a smaller military footprint allows a better chance of a mission going undetected, but it also exposes the units to greater risk of being killed or captured.

Officials said one reason Mr. Rumsfeld called off the 2005 operation was that the number of troops involved in the mission had grown to several hundred, including Army Rangers, members of the Navy Seals and C.I.A. operatives, and he determined that the United States could no longer carry out the mission without General Musharraf’s permission. It is unlikely that the Pakistani president would have approved an operation of that size, officials said.

Some outside experts said American counterterrorism operations had been hamstrung because of concerns about General Musharraf’s shaky government.

“The reluctance to take risk or jeopardize our political relationship with Musharraf may well account for the fact that five and half years after 9/11 we are still trying to run bin Laden and Zawahri to ground,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University.

Those political considerations have created resentment among some members of the military’s Special Operations forces.

“The Special Operations guys are tearing their hair out at the highest levels,” said a former Bush administration official with close ties to those troops. While they have not received good intelligence on the whereabouts of top Qaeda members recently, he said, they say they believe they have sometimes had useful information on lower-level figures.

“There is a degree of frustration that is off the charts, because they are looking at targets on a daily basis and can’t move against them,” he said.

In early 2005, after learning about the Qaeda meeting, the military developed a plan for a small Navy Seals unit to parachute into Pakistan to carry out a quick operation, former officials said.

But as the operation moved up the military chain of command, officials said, various planners bulked up the force’s size to provide security for the Special Operations forces.

“The whole thing turned into the invasion of Pakistan,” said the former senior intelligence official involved in the planning. Still, he said he thought the mission was worth the risk. “We were frustrated because we wanted to take a shot,” he said.

Several former officials interviewed said the operation was not the only occasion since the Sept. 11 attacks that plans were developed to use a large American military force in Pakistan. It is unclear whether any of those missions have been executed.

Some of the military and intelligence officials familiar with the 2005 events say it showed a rift between operators in the field and a military bureaucracy that has still not effectively adapted to hunt for global terrorists, moving too cautiously to use Special Operations troops against terrorist targets.

That criticism has echoes of the risk aversion that the officials said pervaded efforts against Al Qaeda during the Clinton administration, when missions to use American troops to capture or kill Mr. bin Laden in Afghanistan were never executed because they were considered too perilous, risked killing civilians or were based on inadequate intelligence. Rather than sending in ground troops, the Clinton White House instead chose to fire cruise missiles in what became failed attempts to kill Mr. bin Laden and his deputies — a tactic Mr. Bush criticized shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Since then, the C.I.A. has launched missiles from Predator aircraft in the tribal areas several times, with varying degrees of success. Intelligence officials say they believe that in January 2006, an airstrike narrowly missed killing Mr. Zawahri, who hours earlier had attended a dinner in Damadola, a Pakistani village.

General Musharraf cast his lot with the Bush administration in the hunt for Al Qaeda after the 2001 attacks, and he has periodically ordered Pakistan’s military to conduct counterterrorism missions in the tribal areas, provoking fierce resistance there. But in recent months he has pulled back, prompting Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to issue stern warnings in private that he risked losing American aid if he did not step up efforts against Al Qaeda, senior administration officials have said.

Officials said that mid-2005 was a period when they were gathering good intelligence about Al Qaeda’s leaders in Pakistan’s tribal areas. By the next year, however, the White House had become frustrated by the lack of progress in the hunt for Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri.

In early 2006, President Bush ordered a “surge” of dozens of C.I.A. agents to Pakistan, hoping that an influx of intelligence operatives would lead to better information, officials said. But that has brought the United States no closer to locating Al Qaeda’s top two leaders. The latest message from them came this week, in a new tape in which Mr. Zawahri urged Iraqis and Muslims around the world to show more support for Islamist insurgents in Iraq.

In his recently published memoir, George J. Tenet, the former C.I.A. director, said the intelligence about Mr. bin Laden’s whereabouts during the Clinton years was similarly sparse. The information was usually only at the “50-60% confidence level,” he wrote, not sufficient to justify American military action.

“As much as we all wanted Bin Ladin dead, the use of force by a superpower requires information, discipline, and time,” Mr. Tenet wrote. “We rarely had the information in sufficient quantities or the time to evaluate and act on it.”

Reuters Canada : Al-Zawahri past visitor to Pakistani madrasa

Al-Zawahri past visitor to Pakistani madrasa

By Anwarullah Khan | October 31, 2006

KHAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Al Qaeda Number Two Ayman al-Zawahri was a past visitor to a madrasa destroyed by a Pakistan Army helicopter attack, but he was not there when the missiles struck on Monday, senior Pakistani security officials said.

Several other al Qaeda luminaries had passed through the religious school run by pro-Taliban cleric Maulana Liaqatullah, who was killed in the airstrike along with around 80 of his followers, the officials told reporters a day after the attack.

Among the other known militants to have frequented the madrasa at Chenagai village, near the Afghan border in the Bajaur tribal region of northwest Pakistan, was Abu Obaida al-Misri.

An Egyptian, like Zawahri, al-Misri was identified as the mastermind of a plot to blow up U.S.-bound airliners flying from London's Heathrow airport that was foiled earlier this year.

The officials say he was a mentor to Rashid Rauf, a British Muslim arrested in Pakistan in August, who was said to be a key figure in the conspiracy.

No major militant figure was believed to have been present when the army attacked, and orders for the assault were given in anticipation that the militants were about to be sent to fight -- possibly to launch suicide attacks on NATO and Afghan forces.

"The madrasa was under surveillance since July when the activity started picking up pace," said a senior official.

Last January, a CIA-operated Predator missile attack targeted Zawahri in Bajaur's Damadola village near the Afghan border.

Intelligence officials said a handful of al Qaeda operatives at a parley hosted by Liaqatullah were killed. But Zawahri was a no-show and reports that al-Misri was killed proved incorrect.

The Pakistan government had been trying to persuade militant tribesmen to agree peace terms along the lines of accords brokered earlier in the two most restive tribal regions -- North and South Waziristan.

But officials said Liaqatullah and his comrade Maulana Faqir Mohammad, who rallied fighters at the site of the destroyed madrasa immediately after the attack, ignored all warnings.

he officials showed reporters aerial footage shot through a night vision lens of rows of men exercising before daybreak, just an hour before the missiles struck the compound.

TRIBALS SEETHING

Tribesmen said the dead, mostly young men aged between 15 and 25, were merely students. But, President Pervez Musharraf, speaking at a seminar in Islamabad, said they were all militants.

"We know who they were. They were doing military training," Musharraf said.

More than 15,000 armed tribesmen protested against the attack in Khar, Bajaur's main town, and Islamist politicians stoked anti-Western and anti-Musharraf sentiment among ethnic Pashtuns in several towns around North West Frontier Province.

Nowhere is Musharraf's alliance with the United States more unpopular than in the Pashtun tribal belt straddling the Pakistan-Afghan border.

The tribesmen in Khar showed their loyalty with shouts of "Long Live Osama" and "Long Live Mullah Omar."

"Our jihad will continue and God willing, people will go to Afghanistan to oust American and British forces," Maulana Faqir Mohammad, a pro-Taliban cleric, told the crowd of turbaned tribals, many carrying Kalashnikovs and wearing bandoliers, and a few shouldering rocket launchers.

A mountainous region that is difficult to access, Bajaur lies across from the eastern Afghan province of Kunar, where U.S. troops are hunting al Qaeda and Taliban militants.

In contrast to Waziristan, the army has so far not put troops on the ground in Bajaur, though they man border posts there.

Islamist politicians said the attack on the school was really carried out by a U.S. Predator drone aircraft, but Pakistan's military spokesman and a U.S. spokesman in Kabul denied it.

"The entire operation was carried out by our forces. All resources including intelligence was our own," Major-General Shaukat Sultan said, though officials said the intelligence came from various sources.

Kashmir Herald : Pakistan's Russian Roulette of Terrorism

Pakistan's Russian Roulette of Terrorism

Foreign policy analyst Subodh Atal warns that the West is playing a dangerous game in Pakistan.

October 13, 2006

Even as the Taliban regain strength in Afghanistan and wage an insurgency nearly as fierce as in Iraq, the hub of terrorism in the subcontinent has shifted to Pakistan. A series of international terrorism plots uncovered in the U.S., U.K. and Australia has been hatched in, or linked to Pakistan. In the most notorious such plot, British police arrested several suspects planning to use liquid explosives aboard commercial airliners flying from Britain to the United States.

The inability or unwillingness of Pakistani authorities to clamp down on extremist Islam is evident in a recent deal signed by the Pakistani authorities and local militias in Waziristan, which cedes the key province bordering Pakistan to pro-Taliban forces. The deal creates a two-pronged threat -- enabling freer passage to Taliban extremists across the Afghan border, and creating potential sanctuaries for Al Qaeda-related international terrorists. To the east, Pakistani extremist groups continue to foster attacks in Indian Kashmir as well as major cities across the rest of India. The links among the extremist groups, hard-line clerics and Pakistan's military and intelligence services, in a nation infiltrated by Taliban and Al Qaeda, imply that Pakistan could continue to serve as a nucleus for international terrorism activity.

Among the most dangerous of the Pakistani extremist groups are Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. Laskhar-e-Toiba, was formed in 1986 as a brainchild of Abdullah Azzam, Osama Bin Laden's political and religious mentor. The group's sprawling headquarters complex near Lahore in eastern Pakistan is "a coordination center for its organizational, jihadi and educational activities", as reported in the Jamestown Foundation in 2005. Until 2001, the complex was the venue for immense annual gatherings attended by hundreds of jihadi. Members of the group are reported to have sheltered Al Qaeda operatives fleeing post-9/11 operations in Afghanistan in late 2001 and early 2002. Lashkar imprints have been uncovered in terrorist attacks in major cities across India, as well as a number of plots in countries from Australia to the United States, where arrests and convictions in Virginia and California confirm the group's intercontinental reach.

Pakistani journalist Amir Mir, in his book The True Face of Jehadis: Inside Pakistan's Network of Terror, points out that Laskhar-e-Toiba is a favorite of the ISI among all the terrorist groups operating in Pakistan. Mir's book describes Lashkar activists "distributing pamphlets and periodicals preaching the virtues of jehad in Kashmir, Palestine, Chechnya, Kosovo and Eritrea, besides vowing to plant the flag of Islam in Washington, Tel Aviv and New Delhi."

Jaish founder Masood Azhar, established the group in 2002 after his release by India in return for passengers of a hijacked Indian Airlines jet, vowing to destroy the United States and India. Azhar is related by marriage to Rashid Rauf, a key suspect in the London airliner bombing plot. Another notorious member of the group, Sheikh Saeed Omar, may be a critical link tying together Pakistani extremist groups, Al Qaeda and the Pakistani intelligence services. Credible reports suggests Omar's role in the financing of the 9/11 hijackers. International counter-terrorism agencies have been denied access to Omar, who was jailed in Pakistan after being tied to the high profile killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

The infiltration of Pakistan's state by extremists goes far beyond the presence of a few international terrorist groups, however. Islamic radicals have co-opted political parties, including some allied to Musharraf himself, as well as social networks, charities, and businesses. Numerous reports point towards radical links of the nation's military and intelligence services. Noted columnist Steve Coll described this infrastructure as part of "what Pakistan has become as a state and society", in a discussion on the PBS show NewsHour.

Compounding Pakistan's terrorism problem is the nation's history of proliferation of nuclear weapons technology to a number of unstable nations, including Iran, Libya and North Korea. Such activities, which amount to the dangerous trading of the nation's strategic arsenal, must have had at least tacit approval and knowledge of the establishment. Such fears are reinforced by reports that Pakistani nuclear scientists have had contacts with both Osama Bin Laden and Lashkar-e-Toiba.

While intense international counter-terrorism efforts strive to track down and stop plots originating out of Pakistan, the sheer number of such plots pose a significant threat. Given the nation's explosive mix of Islamic extremism intertwined with state institutions, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and a pattern of nuclear proliferation, the game of Russian roulette being played out in Pakistan is perhaps the most dangerous counter-terrorism challenge in the world today.

Since 9/11, the United States has depended on the Musharraf regime for tackling the terrorism problem originating from Pakistan. However, under Musharraf's rule, the Pakistani military has continued to hold sway over the nation's politics with Islamist support, and little progress has been made towards moving the country away from its extremist path. Husain Haqqani, Director of the Center of International Relations at Boston University, and ex-advisor to several Pakistani prime ministers describes the extent of the problem in his book, Pakistan, Between Mosque and Military. According to Haqqani, "Under military leadership, Pakistan has defined its national objective as wresting Kashmir from India and in recent years, establishing a client regime in Afghanistan. Unless Islamabad's objectives are redefined as focusing on economic prosperity and popular participation in governance -- which the military as an institution remains reluctant to do -- the state will continue to turn to Islam as a national unifier."

Unquestioning western support, including considerable financial and military aid, has acted as an enabler for Musharraf and the Pakistan military to continue to steer the nation down the same path. Many critical long-term goals, such as rooting out of intolerance from Pakistani madrassa and public school curricula, have not been realized five years after 9/11, even as extremist groups tied to the Al Qaeda and Taleban remain entrenched in the country.

Without a transitioning back towards democracy, and away from extremism and domination of the military, Pakistan will continue to act as a hub of international terrorism and a destabilizing influence in the region. As Haqqani points out in his book, "The United States has sought short term gains from its relationship with Pakistan, inadvertently accentuating that country's problems in the process." A sustained end to the extremism and terrorism centered in Pakistan may require a significant overhaul of policy. Specifically, the United States should move away from its over-dependence on a general who has failed to deliver on many of his promises, and instead support the nation's mainstream parties that have been sidelined since Musharraf's coup in 1999. Washington and others should also consider tying external aid to specific objectives such as the closing down of terrorist camps and measurable action against Taliban militants.

Subodh Atal is an independent foreign policy analyst based near Washington, D.C.

Online News : No allegations till proofs found: Sherpao

No allegations till proofs found: Sherpao

October 10, 2006

ISLAMABAD: Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao, Minister for Interior has said until complete proofs are found no allegations can be levied against any country regarding the Russian made rockets found in the Federal Capital adding that the investigations are underway on various aspects.

Talking to media persons at an Iftar-dinner hosted in honor of journalists here in the federal capital on Monday he said the security in the capital has been beefed up and along with the local police three thousand personnel of Frontier Constabulary and Rangers are performing their duties at vital places and important buildings.

He said the peace deal in Waziristan has turned out to be a symbol of peace. In Balochistan the areas of Dera Bugti and Kohlu are reverting towards peace and there is decrease in armed resistance. In addition to that political process has started in the area.

State Minister for Education, Anisa Zeb Tahir Kheli was also present on the occasion.

Aftab Sherpao said an extradition treaty has been signed with Britain and work is continuing on it. Interrogations are taking place with Rashid Rauf and investigation agencies are interrogating him.

In reference to the recovery of rockets, he said the objective was to create panic and fear. Preliminary investigations reveal that the rockets are of the Soviet-Afghan war era and have been smuggled from Afghanistan.

The Federal Minister said in important areas of the capital including the Margalla Hills special search operation is being conducted and for that matter special contingents of FC and Rangers have been appointed.

He said in Balochistan action was taken out against Ferraris and that cannot be called a military operation as mostly paramilitary forces took part in the action. The situation is improving now and the Ferraris are surrendering.

BBC : Al-Qaeda HQ 'based in Pakistan'

Al-Qaeda HQ 'based in Pakistan'

BBC News | October 2, 2006

A letter found when al-Qaeda's chief in Iraq was killed said the group's leadership was based in Waziristan, Pakistan, the Washington Post reports.

The December 2005 missive is said to be the first to emerge from what the US military calls a "treasure trove" after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's death in June.

It was reportedly sent by a member of Osama Bin Laden's high command, who said he wrote from Waziristan.

Bin Laden is suspected of hiding along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

If accurate, the letter would confirm the location of the al-Qaeda leadership at the time it was written, the newspaper said.

'Wish to advise'

The missive was uncovered from Iraqi safe houses at the time of Zarqawi's death in a US air strike, according to the Washington Post.

A 15-page English translation of the Arabic document was released last week by a US military counter-terrorism centre, the paper reported.

The author said he was writing from al-Qaeda headquarters in the restive border region, where Taleban and al-Qaeda fugitives have been active.

The paper said the letter was signed by "Atiyah," whom counter-terrorism officials believe is Atiyah Abd al Rahman, a 37-year-old Libyan who joined Bin Laden during the 1980s.

"I am with them," the letter says.

"And they have some comments about some of your circumstances."

The letter described the difficulty of direct communications between Waziristan and Iraq, and suggested it was easier for Zarqawi to send a representative to Pakistan than the other way around, the Washington Post reported.

It also warned Zarqawi that he risked removal as the leader in Iraq if he continued to alienate Sunni leaders and rival insurgent groups, the paper said.

The "brothers wish that they had a way to talk to you and advise you, and to guide and instruct you; however, they too are occupied with vicious enemies here," Atiyah reportedly wrote.

"They are also weak. And we ask God that He strengthen them and mend their fractures."

Counter-terrorism officials reportedly deemed the document authentic.

'Laughing hijackers'

The report comes a day after the release of a video purportedly showing the ringleader of the 9/11 attacks.

British newspaper the Sunday Times posted the video, which has no sound, on its website.

Dated January 2000, it shows ringleader Mohammed Atta and fellow hijacker Ziad Jarrah talking and laughing, and speaking to the camera.

The Sunday Times said the video was made in Afghanistan for release after their deaths.

Aldergrove Star : Afghanistan: A Modest Proposal

Afghanistan: A Modest Proposal

By GWYNNE DYER | September 29, 2006

Most people in Afghanistan are farmers. If Hamid Karzai's Western-backed government in Kabul is to survive, it must have their support. So not destroying their main cash crop should be an obvious priority for Karzai's foreign supporters. But what the hell, let's go burn some poppies.

"We need to realize that we could actually fail here," said Lieutenant General David Richards, British commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, recently. In south-western Afghanistan, where 7,000 British, Canadian and Dutch troops were committed during the summer to contain a resurgent Taliban, the guerillas now actually stand and fight, even against NATO's overwhelming firepower and air power, and everything that moves on the roads gets ambushed.

The combat in Afghanistan is more severe and sustained than anything seen in Iraq, for the Taliban fight in organized units with good light infantry weapons. In the past month, Britain and Canada have lost about half as many soldiers killed in Afghanistan as the US lost in Iraq in the same time, out of a combat force perhaps one-tenth as big.

Concern in Europe about Western casualties in Afghanistan is already so great that none of the Nato countries was willing to commit more troops to the fighting when their defence chiefs met in Belgium on September 13, despite an urgent appeal from General Richards for 2,500 more combat troops. Most of them just don't believe that a few thousand more troops will save the situation in Afghanistan.

To limit their casualties, the British have already abandoned their original "section-house" strategy of spreading troops through the villages of the south-west in small groups that would provide security and help with reconstruction. They were just too vulnerable, so they have been pulled back to bigger base camps and replaced by Afghan police (who will make deals with the local Taliban forces to save their lives.)

The rapid collapse of the Taliban government in the face of America's air power and its locally purchased allies in late 2001 created a wholly misleading impression that the question of who controls the country had been settled. Afghanistan has always been an easy country to invade but a hard country to occupy. Resistance to foreign intervention takes time to build up, but the Afghans defeated British occupations (twice) and a Soviet occupation when those empires were at the height of their power, and they are well on the way to doing it again.

Perhaps if the US and its allies had smothered the country in troops and drowned it in aid at the outset, the rapid increase in security and prosperity would have created a solid base of support for the government they installed under President Karzai. But most of the available troops were sent off to invade Iraq instead, and most of the money went to American contractors in Iraq, not American contractors in Afghanistan (though little of it reached the local people in either case).

The various warlords who allied themselves with the United States are the real power in most of Afghanistan, and in the traditional opium-producing areas in the south they have encouraged a return to poppy-farming (which had been almost eradicated under the Taliban) in order to get some cash flow. Poor farmers struggling under staggering loads of debt were happy to cooperate, and by now Afghanistan is producing about 90 percent of the world's opium, the raw material for heroin.

That's the price you pay for disrupting the established order, and the US should just have paid it. There's no real point in destroying poppies in Afghanistan, because they'll just get planted elsewhere: so long as heroin is illegal, the price will be high enough that people somewhere will grow it. Even if it is ideologically impossible for the United States to end its foolish, unwinnable "war on drugs," it should have turned a blind eye in Afghanistan.

But it didn't. For the past five years a shadowy outfit called DynCorps has been destroying the poppy-fields of southern Afghanistan's poorest farmers with US and British military support. This was an opportunity the Taliban could not resist, and the alliance between Taliban fighters and poppy-farmers (now often the same people) is at the root of the resurgent guerilla war in the south.

It begins to smell like the last year or two in a classic anti-colonial war, when the guerillas start winning and local players begin to hedge their bets. After taking heavy casualties, Pakistan has agreed with the tribes of Waziristan to withdraw its troops from the lawless province, giving the Taliban a secure base on Afghanistan's border. Karzai, seeking allies who will help him survive the eventual pull-out of Western troops, is appointing gangsters and drug-runners as local police chiefs and commanders. The end-game has started, and the foreigners seem bound to lose.

Only one chance remains for them. The futile "war on drugs" will drag on endlessly elsewhere, but if they legalized the cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan -- and bought up the entire crop at premium prices -- they might just break the link between the Taliban and the farmers.

Store it, burn it, whatever, but stop destroying the farmers' livelihoods and put a few billion dollars directly into their pockets. Otherwise, the first Afghan cities will probably start to fall into Taliban hands within the next year to 18 months.