Reuters : FACTBOX - U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan

FACTBOX - U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan

By Augustine Anthony | May 7, 2009

ISLAMABAD, May 7 (Reuters) - Pakistan hopes the United States will halt attacks on militants in Pakistan by pilotless drone aircraft, the Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

President Asif Ali Zardari had discussed the drone strikes with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington on Wednesday, a ministry spokesman said.

Civilian casualties caused by the missile-carrying drones in Pakistan have infuriated many Pakistanis and made it harder for the government to cooperate with the United States.

Here are some facts about the U.S. missile attacks, the controversy they have caused, and a list of some of the more prominent militants killed according to Pakistani officials.

WHY DOES THE UNITED STATES ATTACK?

Many al Qaeda members and Taliban fled to northwestern Pakistan's ungoverned ethnic Pashtun belt after U.S.-led soldiers ousted the Taliban in 2001. From the sanctuaries, the militants have orchestrated insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The United States and Afghanistan have pressed Pakistan to eliminate the sanctuaries. Apparently frustrated by Pakistan's inability to do so, the United States is hitting the militants itself.

HOW MANY ATTACKS?

The United States has carried out about 40 drone air strikes since the begining of last year, most since September, killing more than 300 people, including many foreign militants, according to a tally of reports from Pakistani intelligence agents, district government officials and residents. There have been 14 attacks this year with five in April.

SOME OF THE PEOPLE REPORTED KILLED

Jan. 28, 2008 - A senior al Qaeda member, Abu Laith al-Libi, was killed in a strike in North Waziristan.

July 28 - An al Qaeda chemical and biological weapons expert, Abu Khabab al-Masri, was killed in South Waziristan.

Oct. 31 - A mid-level al Qaeda leader, Abu Akash, was killed in an attack in North Waziristan.

Nov. 19 - An Arab al Qaeda operative identified as Abdullah Azam al-Saudi was killed in Bannu district.

Nov. 22 - Rashid Rauf, a Briton with al Qaeda links and the suspected ringleader of a 2006 plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic, was killed in an attack in North Waziristan. An Egyptian named as Abu Zubair al-Masri was also said to be among the dead in that same attack.

Jan. 1, 2009 - A U.S. drone killed three foreign fighters in South Waziristan, Pakistani agents said. A week later, a U.S. counterterrorism official said al Qaeda's operational chief, Usama al-Kini, and an aide had been killed in South Waziristan. He declined to say how or when they died.

WHERE ARE THE DRONES' LAUNCHING SITES?

A senior U.S. lawmaker, Senator Dianne Feinstein, told a U.S. Senate hearing in February that drones were being operated and flown from an air base inside Pakistan. Pakistan denied that saying there was no permission for the strikes, nor had there even been.

PAKISTAN'S POSITION

Pakistan supports the U.S.-led campaign against militancy but does not allow foreign military operations inside its territory. It says the drones violate its sovereignty and undermine efforts to deal with militancy by inflaming public anger and bolstering militant support.

U.S. POSITION

The United States has shrugged off Pakistani protests. It says the attacks are needed to protect U.S. troops in Afghanistan and kill Taliban and al Qaeda militants who threaten the forces. (Writing by Augustine Anthony; Editing by Robert Birsel and Jerry Norton)

Daily Times : Dead men plotting terror?

Dead men plotting terror?

UK officials believe foiled attack was planned by Rashid Rauf

Daily Times Monitor | April 13, 2009

WASHINGTON: How could Rashid Rauf, a “high value” Al Qaeda target, be plotting terrorist attacks in Britain in April 2009 – as claimed by the British authorities – if he was killed months ago in a famous drone strike in Waziristan, as US officials claimed, in November 2008, the Nesweek magazine is asking.

According to one UK expert, some British investigators as well as Rauf’s family think that he may have survived.

Rauf, a former British resident, was allegedly a central figure in an August 2006 plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners. The plot was foiled after Rauf was arrested in Pakistan. But in December 2007, he escaped from custody. US officials suspected ‘inside’ help and the White House was delighted when a Predator operation supposedly took him out. Soon afterwards, however, Rauf’s Pakistani lawyer asked authorities to produce the body which they were apparently unable to do.

US officials talking to the Newsweek said US agencies still believed Rauf was killed in the strike.

“While it is not 100 percent confirmed,” said one of the officials, “there are good reasons to believe Rashid Rauf is dead.”

“And even if he’s dead,” the magazine says, “US and UK officials said it’s possible the Easter plot was hatched prior to November 2008 — meaning that Rauf’s reach may extend beyond the grave.”

Telegraph : UK should distance itself from US drone attacks in Pakistan, says minister

UK should distance itself from US drone attacks in Pakistan, says minister

Britain should distance itself from US missile attacks on al-Qaeda strongholds in the tribal areas of Pakistan, a Government minister has said.

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent | April 12, 2009

Sadiq Khan, the minister for community cohesion, said Britain needed to rebuild its reputation in Pakistan where anger is mounting over the attacks launched by unmanned drones.

Mr Khan, who was in Pakistan on an official visit when counter-terrrorism raids took place in Manchester and Liverpool last week, said many young men there were angry with the attacks which have been blamed for killing innocent people as well as terrorists.

Rashid Rauf, the man said to be behind the alleged plot to target shopping centres in Manchester, was reported by the US as being killed in one such attack last year.

The attacks, which have been stepped up in recent months, are highly controversial in Pakistan, partly because they are seen as an American incursion on Pakistani sovereignty.

Mr Khan said the Government needed to make clear that Britain's foreign policy was different from Washington's.

The minister said: "In Islamabad, I spoke to university students about being British and Muslim, the values we share in the UK and the freedom to practise faith freely, be treated equally, protected against discrimination, and be active citizens with the freedom to voice our concerns and disagree without fear.

"In return, I listened to the anger and pain over the challenges that young Pakistanis growing up in Pakistan face, including the anger and frustration over US drone attacks.

"It is clear, in many Pakistanis' eyes, the UK is considered in the same terms as the US.

"One of the lessons of the Iraq war is that we need to ensure we are better at explaining our foreign policy, especially when it is distinct and different from [policy in] the US."

Mr Khan was later forced to clarify that he believed Britain needed to “stand shoulder to shoulder with those who are fighting terrorism” including both the US and Pakistan.

The Times : Ghost in the terror machine

Ghost in the terror machine

Last week's raids were the result of a long investigation into a wider campaign plotted by an Al-Qaeda chief before his apparent death

David Leppard | From The Sunday Times | April 12, 2009

Early last Wednesday evening, Phil Harrow, a blood service courier from Toxteth, Liverpool, was sitting in front of his computer in his living room, his attention occasionally distracted by the sounds of the local children playing football on the street outside his front window on Cedar Grove.

At about 5.30pm, the peace was shattered and the children scattered in terror. “Eight armed officers, dressed in black from head to toe and wearing body armour and ski masks, jumped from an unmarked white van, screamed at the children to get out of the street and battered their way into the house two doors down from mine,” recalled Harrow.

Within minutes three unmarked police cars and four large yellow police vans had cordoned off the street and about 30 more officers were shouting at residents to stay indoors with their doors and windows shut.

Three Asian men were arrested and quickly driven off. The officers also took away a blue Nissan Micra and a black Vauxhall Corsa after neighbours told them the vehicles belonged to the men.

It was a pattern repeated across the city and the northwest of England as police swooped simultaneously as part of Operation Pathway, which was targeting an alleged Al-Qaeda-driven terror plot aimed at unspecified targets in Britain.

Elsewhere in Liverpool, a man was hauled out of a flat above an off-licence on Earle Road, Wavertree, about half a mile from Cedar Grove. At Liverpool John Moores University across the city, a student was dragged from the library and arrested.

In Manchester two men were picked up in a flat in the Cheetham Hill area, another couple were seized in a cybercafe and a fifth man was arrested on the M602 motorway. Two other men were held in Clitheroe, Lancashire, where they had been staying at a local B&B.

The arrest of the 12 men — 11 Pakistanis and one Briton — had been rushed forward because of a career-ending blunder earlier that day by Bob Quick, the Metropolitan police assistant commissioner who was Britain’s chief anti-terror officer.

Quick had been running late for a morning meeting with Gordon Brown at No 10, at which he was to tell the prime minister about the raids which had been planned for 6am the next day. In the taxi on the way, he was reading a document headed Secret: Briefing Note Operation Pathway. Quick was in such a rush that he forgot to put the document back in its buff folder before he got out of the cab.

A photographer snatched a picture of the document which was then transmitted to media outlets around the world. The operation had to be hastily brought forward by 12 hours.

Thankfully, Quick’s error had serious consequences only for himself — he resigned on Thursday morning — but it added unnecessary drama and danger to an operation that had already been a close-run thing — and which security sources fear is part of a much bigger threat.

THE trail to the Manchester raids is thought to have begun last December with the arrest of 14 suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists by Belgian police.

Officials believed a suicide bombing aimed at a two-day summit of European leaders, including Brown, was imminent after learning that one of the suspects had received a green light from his paymasters abroad.

During their detention, few of the men were prepared to co-operate with the Belgian authorities but one — whose identity remains a closely guarded secret — was willing to talk. In a series of interviews he described how he had been personally “tasked” to carry out a suicide attack in Belgium. His instructor was Rashid Rauf, a fugitive on the run from British police in Pakistan.

The would-be suicide bomber said that the Belgian plot was just one of a number of large-scale attacks that Rauf had planned across Europe. The targets were unidentified cities in Belgium, France, Holland and the UK.

Interviewed later by a member of MI5, the supergrass said that all he knew was that Rauf had dispatched a mastermind — whose pseudonym he gave — to a British city to make preparations for an attack. His tip-off was vague but it sparked one of the largest manhunts in MI5’s recent history.

Rauf, who was born in Pakistan but was brought up in the Midlands, has already been linked to a series of alleged high-profile Islamist terror plots, including the failed July 21 suicide bomb plot that targeted London in 2005.

Despite this known track record, Rauf’s real importance had been underestimated. About four years ago he became Al-Qaeda’s director of European operations.

Last November Rauf was reportedly killed when three American Hellfire missiles from a CIA predator drone destroyed a mud-built bungalow in a village in North Waziristan, in the lawless tribal lands that span the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Aerial photographs taken by the Americans after the missile strike show a body, originally thought to be Rauf’s, covered in a shroud being carried from the rubble. But original assessments that he is dead have been revised. “There is nothing definitely to say he’s actually dead,” said a senior western intelligence official last week.

“It may take a long time to find out. We honestly don’t know.”

Pakistani intelligence officials remain convinced that he was killed in the strike.

A few months earlier Rauf had sent several cells to Europe to carry out a series of linked attacks which were driven by Al-Qaeda’s hatred for Barack Obama — “a house negro” as Osama Bin Laden’s deputy has called him. Informed sources said it is now believed that the alleged northwest cell was part of this Europe-wide network.

The suspected members of the northwest cell had first came to the attention of MI5 about two months after the thwarted Brussels attack in December.

At any given time MI5 monitors about 2,000 people in Britain who form an estimated 230 networks suspected of links to violent extremism. Each individual is subject to a sliding scale of monitoring depending on the agency’s assessment of the threat they pose and how close they are thought to be to “attack planning”.

Each week a committee of senior MI5 officials meet at the agency’s headquarters in Westminster to review the status of each operation, upgrading and downgrading different investigations as appropriate.

Well placed officials say the alleged northwest cell had been the subject of investigation for several weeks since January. About a month ago that was suddenly stepped up after fresh information indicated that the members of the cell might be serious about attack planning. Operation Pathway was moved to the top of MI5’s priority list. Hundreds of police and MI5 officers were assigned to the investigation.

A number of suspects, many of them Pakistanis on student visas, were put under full-time surveillance. Their homes were bugged, their telephone calls were intercepted and they were followed night and day by officers from MI5’s A4 surveillance division.

This department specialises in covert surveillance. At terror camps in Afghanistan and the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan, Al-Qaeda terrorist recruits are routinely trained in counter-surveillance tactics. This can include switching back on their route, stopping suddenly in the street and generally being aware of everybody around them.

To circumvent this, MI5 employs people who look the opposite of the stereotypical spy. The agency has at its disposal an army of elderly women — many in their sixties and seventies — and young mothers with babies in prams.

There is also a range of James Bond-style devices which are the agency’s most closely guarded secrets. It is rumoured, for example, that MI5 has developed a colourless chemical which is “painted” on a suspect’s clothing or shoes during a covert entry of the suspect’s home while he or she is out. The suspect will then leave a trace of the chemical wherever he goes, allowing a trained MI5 dog to follow his trail.

It is not known whether any of these tactics were used in Operation Pathway. But about a fortnight ago surveillance officers reported that the suspects had been taking photographs of four locations in Manchester. These included the Arndale shopping centre, the smart shopping area of St Ann’s Square, the Trafford shopping centre and the Birdcage nightclub.

Critically, their e-mails were monitored — a highly sensitive task usually assigned in such operations to technical experts at GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping agency at Cheltenham.

The turning point came about a week ago when a series of e-mails thought to have been received by at least one of the suspects indicated a specific timeframe for the alleged plot. The e-mails suggested that the cell had moved into the stage of attack planning. They showed a “window” for a possible attack of about five or six days from Good Friday. “Dates around the Easter holiday were mentioned,” one senior police source said this weekend.

Yet there remained serious gaps in the Pathway investigation. Despite the photographs, police say they had no definite evidence of the planned target. Neither had Pathway uncovered any evidence that the suspects had acquired explosives, arms or ammunition.

There was no indication, either, as to whether the planned operation was a suicide attack, or how many of those arrested would be directly involved and which of them were simply supplying logistical support such as purchasing materials or acting as drivers and reconnaissance scouts.

For MI5 officers running Pathway from the agency’s Northern Operations Centre (opened amid great secrecy last year in a northern city), these were good reasons to watch and wait. But the risks of letting the suspects run overrode that.

“There is always a challenge to balance the need to gather more intelligence with the need to protect the public. There was clear intent and signs of organisation, very clearly something was going on, so we acted to protect the public,” said a security source.

Early last week senior police and MI5 officers met at Scotland Yard and agreed that the suspected members of the cell should be arrested. The date for “executive action” was set for 6am last Thursday when the suspects would almost certainly be at home and asleep. But then came Quick’s unwitting intervention.

AS the police questioning of the arrested men continues at three separate locations, few details have emerged of their lives in Britain. Neighbours in Liverpool spoke last week of cars coming and going from addresses late at night and the playing of loud Islamic music from a flat occupied by one of the men, but the suspects appear to have had little interaction with people other than at work.

Two of the men worked as security guards at the Homebase DIY store in Clitheroe, but had been there for only two weeks. Two more were believed to have worked as contractors for Cargo2go, a delivery firm based at Manchester airport, because one of the men was driving one of the company’s vans when he was arrested.

However, Ian Southworth, a director, said yesterday that he was mystified at the suggestion. “All our drivers are owner-drivers. It could be a driver that used to work for us that’s left and sold the vehicle and the logo’s still on it, or it could have been a lost or stolen vehicle,” he said.

A number of the 11 Pakistanis arrested were from the tribal areas and had been admitted to Britain on student visas.

This has stoked up a political row, with Islamabad and Downing Street trading blows over who was responsible for lax checks on immigrants, especially those entering Britain on student visas which are notoriously abused.

Gordon Brown said Pakistan “has to do more to root out terrorist elements in its country”. The prime minister had said previously that two out of three terror plots uncovered by MI5 and police were hatched in Pakistan. But Wajid Shamsul Hasan, the Pakistan high commissioner, retaliated by saying the problem was “at your end”.

This weekend a senior immigration judge dismissed as “bluster” claims by Phil Woolas, the Home Officer minister, that the system for checking student visas had been recently tightened up and was “one of the best in the world”.

The judge pointed to the six-month closure, on security grounds, of the main visa office at the British high commission in Islamabad, which meant that cases were being channelled through an outpost in Abu Dhabi, 1,300 miles away. He said that at 50% of the appeals, by those on student visas refused entry to Britain, there was no Home Office representation. In many cases the only documentation produced as evidence was that provided by the appellant, “which can often be forged or inadequate”, said the judge.

His comments were echoed by John Tincey, chairman of the Immigration Service Union which represents border staff, who said that the proposed introduction of the e-borders system involving automated checks on visitors was fraught with danger.

“Foreign nationals could be allowed into Britain without being interviewed by an immigration officer,” he said.

“There is real danger that our immigration controls will be able to catch only those who are already known to the authorities and will be helpless to detect first-time terrorists and illegal immigrants.”

Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, said: “This is a completely shambolic system.”

THE arguments about the immigration system will continue for some time but this weekend the police priority was the continuing search of 10 properties in Manchester and Liverpool.

Yesterday police released an 18-year-old, the youngest of the suspects, into the custody of the UK Border Agency. They have 28 days to hold the 11 other men, who are aged between 22 and 41, before either charging them or releasing them.

The fate of Operation Pathway will hinge on whether they can gather enough evidence from the interviews and seized property for prosecutors to press charges.

Rauf’s plans for Europe-wide attacks leave intelligence agencies rushing to locate and defuse a group of ticking timebombs. Whether he is dead or alive, those ticking bombs are his real legacy.

Additional reporting: Kevin Dowling, Philip Cardy, Daud Khattak in Peshawar

Newsweek : A Dead Man Scheming?

A Dead Man Scheming?

By Mark Hosenball | NEWSWEEK | Published Apr 11, 2009 | From the magazine issue dated Apr 20, 2009

It's a mystery what the head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism squad was thinking when he walked into the U.K. prime minister's office at 10 Downing Street carrying in plain view a "secret" report about Al Qaeda's attack planning. News photos of Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick's careless move compromised a police crackdown, forcing U.K. officials to swoop in and arrest 12 suspects—all but one of them Pakistani nationals—in connection with an alleged Easter holiday plot to attack shopping centers and a nightclub in northern England. Quick resigned the next day. Another mystery remains unsolved: whether Rashid Rauf, a "high value" Qaeda target during the Bush administration and one of the Easter plot's alleged masterminds, is alive or dead. U.S. officials believe that Rauf was killed just before last Thanksgiving by a CIA-operated Predator drone strike in Pakistan's lawless North Waziristan. But according to one U.K. expert who's been briefed on the case, some British investigators— and Rauf's own family—think he may have survived. (A U.K. spokesperson had no comment on the matter.)

Rauf, a former British resident, was allegedly a central figure in an August 2006 plot by U.K.-based terrorists to blow up transatlantic airliners. The plot was broken up after authorities in Pakistan arrested Rauf. But in December 2007, he escaped from custody as he was being transferred back to prison from a court hearing in Islamabad. (He allegedly fled via a bathroom window after his guards allowed him to stop for a prayer break; U.S. officials suspected an "inside job.") The White House was delighted when the Predator operation supposedly took him out. But soon after the missile strike, which U.S. officials said killed five men, including Rauf, his Pakistani lawyer claimed he was still alive and dared authorities to produce the body—which they were apparently unable to do.

Three current and former U.S. officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing a sensitive matter, told NEWSWEEK that U.S. agencies still believe Rauf was killed in the strike. "While it is not 100 percent confirmed," said one of the officials, "there are good reasons to believe Rashid Rauf is dead." In most Predator operations, officials in Washington have overhead video feeds that enable them to follow targets prior to a missile firing and to see bodies following the attack. But sometimes, another of the officials said, the evidence is more ambiguous. "If he is alive," the official added, "we should regard this guy as a serious threat to U.S. interests." And even if he's dead, U.S. and U.K. officials said it's possible the Easter plot was hatched prior to November 2008—meaning that Rauf's reach may extend beyond the grave.

© 2009

Sunday Times : Minister hits out at attacks by US drones

Minister hits out at attacks by US drones

David Leppard and Abul Taher | From The Sunday Times | April 12, 2009

A GOVERNMENT minister has called for Britain to distance itself publicly from the American policy of launching attacks on Al-Qaeda terrorists with pilotless drones to avoid inflaming Pakistani opinion.

Sadiq Khan, the community cohesion minister, said he had listened to the “anger and frustration” of students in Islamabad over US attacks inside Pakistan. “It’s quite clear in many Pakistani eyes that the UK is considered in the same terms as the US,” said Khan. “We want to explain that our foreign policy, especially on the issue of drone attacks, is distinct from US foreign policy.”

Khan’s comments came as the full extent emerged of what investigators believe is Pakistan-based control of the alleged Al-Qaeda plot to bomb shopping centres in Manchester over Easter.

Rashid Rauf, a fugitive British terrorist identified by MI5 as Al-Qaeda’s “director of operations” in Europe, is suspected of planning the bombing as part of a “master plan” for attacks on European cities.

Multiple cells, comprising at least 12 terrorists each, were dispatched last year from Pakistan’s tribal areas to conduct a series of atrocities in the UK, France, Belgium and elsewhere, an Al-Qaeda informant has told MI5. The cells are said to have been acting under the orders of Rauf, 27, from Birmingham, who has previously been linked to the failed suicide attack on London in July 21, 2005.

The plan was set in motion just weeks before a US Preda-tor missile strike targeted Rauf in a remote Pakistani village. Officials are still unclear whether he survived the attack last November.

Details of the plan were uncovered by MI5 last December after the arrest of 14 suspected Islamist terrorists in Brussels. Belgian prosecutors said at the time they believed the men were planning a suicide attack to coincide with a European Union summit attended by Gordon Brown.

A senior Scotland Yard official said one of the suspects had confessed that he had been “personally tasked” by Rauf to carry out the bombing. In an interview with MI5 he disclosed that Rauf, who fled to Pakistan seven years ago, had ordered a series of European attacks.

He said the Al-Qaeda chief had dispatched a cell leader to a British city to plan an attack there. Sources say the alleged Easter bomb plot is likely to have been that attack.

Last week 12 men, including 11 Pakistanis on student visas, were arrested in raids on Manchester, Liverpool and Clitheroe, Lancashire.

WSJ : U.K. Official Resigns After Security Lapse

U.K. Official Resigns After Security Lapse

By CARRICK MOLLENKAMP, ALISTAIR MACDONALD and SIOBHAN GORMAN | April 10, 2009

LONDON -- The Metropolitan Police Service entered a new phase of turmoil when its top counterterrorism official, Bob Quick, resigned in the wake of his inadvertent disclosure of secret plans to stop an alleged terrorist plot in northwest England.

John Yates, a 28-year Metropolitan Police veteran known for his skill in murder cases and delicate political inquiries, immediately succeeded Mr. Quick, becoming the third counterterrorism chief Scotland Yard has had since late 2007. The change comes as the U.K. is dealing with the reality that small, radical Islamic cells remain a big threat -- even as the government spends more time and money on intelligence and outreach to Muslim communities.

When Robert Quick arrived at No 10 Downing Street in London earlier this week, he was carrying a document labeled "Secret" visible in his hand.

Police now plan to question the 12 people arrested in raids across northwest England on Wednesday. Among them were 10 Pakistani-born U.K. students who may have entered the U.K. as a working group, according to people familiar with the situation. One suspect is U.K.-born.

Peter Fahy, chief constable of the Greater Manchester Police, said Thursday that the arrests had been planned for a day later. But officers scrambled to change plans when Mr. Quick -- visiting Downing Street Wednesday morning for a briefing with Prime Minister Gordon Brown -- was photographed carrying a briefing paper with a page of details of the raid clearly visible.

In the aftermath of the arrests, Mr. Quick apologized immediately. But pressure quickly mounted for his resignation, which he delivered Thursday morning.

Police haven't said whether the suspects were known to have a plan to attack specific targets.

Mr. Quick's gaffe drew attention away from the fact that the potential for terrorism remains an important issue in the U.K. A 2005 attack on the London transportation system left 56 people dead, and several failed attempts followed in 2006 and 2007. Last month, the Home Office said that al Qaeda may fragment, but that the terrorist threat will likely diversify toward smaller "self-starting" groups.

"We do have some very serious contamination" in the U.K. community, said Tarique Ghaffur, a London security consultant who served as a high-ranking Scotland Yard assistant commissioner until last November. "It's a very difficult scenario and a very dangerous one."

At the same time, there has been instability in the country's top counterterrorism ranks. In the past 18 months, counterterrorism chiefs Peter Clarke and Andy Hayman departed. Mr. Quick was named to the post a little more than a year ago.

A spokesman for London Mayor Boris Johnson wasn't immediately available for comment. A Scotland Yard spokesman said the turnover in such a critical post wouldn't have a negative impact on police performance.

Ties to Pakistan in the alleged terrorist plot are likely to be an important focus for the police, who have traced connections to that country in prior terrorist probes traced connections. Large-scale immigration to the U.K. from Pakistan, a former British colony, dates to the 1950s.

More than 250,000 people from Pakistan were allowed into the U.K. in 2007 for reasons including business, visits and emigration from Pakistan. In 2007, 10,600 people from Pakistan were granted student visas. A Home Office spokesman said the visa applications require fingerprinting and scrutiny of ties to terrorism.

A suspected terrorist named Rashid Rauf was thought to be a leader of a failed plot to blow up trans-Atlantic flights in 2006. Mr. Rauf, a U.K. citizen of Pakistani origin, was believed killed in a drone attack in Pakistan there last November. Since last summer, the U.S. has stepped up Central Intelligence Agency drone attacks against al Qaeda targets in Pakistan's tribal region along the Afghan border. Western security officials said the missile attacks appear to have reduced but not eliminated British terrorist plots linked to Pakistan.

A Pakistani security official said his government was aware of Wednesday's arrests and awaiting confirmation that those arrested were of Pakistani origin. The official said Pakistan was prepared to cooperate but wanted proof. Mr. Brown, the U.K. prime minister, was expected to speak soon with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.

In a separate headache for Scotland Yard, police on Thursday suspended an officer following the death of a man during protests surrounding last week's Group of 20 meeting of world leaders. The suspension followed the disclosure of video footage that showed a police officer knocking down the man -- who wasn't protesting -- minutes before he collapsed and died from an apparent heart attack.

—Jennifer Martinez contributed to this article.

Write to Carrick Mollenkamp at carrick.mollenkamp@wsj.com, Alistair MacDonald at alistair.macdonald@wsj.com and Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com

The News : 60 drone hits kill 14 al-Qaeda men, 687 civilians

60 drone hits kill 14 al-Qaeda men, 687 civilians

By Amir Mir | April 10, 2009

LAHORE: Of the 60 cross-border predator strikes carried out by the Afghanistan-based American drones in Pakistan between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, only 10 were able to hit their actual targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders, besides perishing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians. The success percentage of the US predator strikes thus comes to not more than six per cent.

Figures compiled by the Pakistani authorities show that a total of 701 people, including 14 al-Qaeda leaders, have been killed since January 2006 in 60 American predator attacks targeting the tribal areas of Pakistan. Two strikes carried out in 2006 had killed 98 civilians while three attacks conducted in 2007 had slain 66 Pakistanis, yet none of the wanted al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders could be hit by the Americans right on target. However, of the 50 drone attacks carried out between January 29, 2008 and April 8, 2009, 10 hit their targets and killed 14 wanted al-Qaeda operatives. Most of these attacks were carried out on the basis of intelligence believed to have been provided by the Pakistani and Afghan tribesmen who had been spying for the US-led allied forces stationed in Afghanistan.

The remaining 50 drone attacks went wrong due to faulty intelligence information, killing hundreds of innocent civilians, including women and children. The number of the Pakistani civilians killed in those 50 attacks stood at 537, in which 385 people lost their lives in 2008 and 152 people were slain in the first 99 days of 2009 (between January 1 and April 8).

Of the 50 drone attacks, targeting the Pakistani tribal areas since January 2008, 36 were carried out in 2008 and 14 were conducted in the first 99 days of 2009. Of the 14 attacks targeting Pakistan in 2009, three were carried out in January, killing 30 people, two in February killing 55 people, five in March killing 36 people and four were conducted in the first nine days of April, killing 31 people.

Of the 14 strikes carried out in the first 99 days of April 2009, only one proved successful, killing two most wanted senior al-Qaeda leaders - Osama al Kini and Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan. Both had lost their lives in a New Year’s Day drone strike carried out in the South Waziristan region on January 1, 2009.

Kini was believed to be the chief operational commander of al-Qaeda in Pakistan and had replaced Abu Faraj Al Libi after his arrest from Bannu in 2004. Both men were behind the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Dares Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, which killed 224 civilians and wounded more than 5,000 others.

There were 36 recorded cross-border US predator strikes inside Pakistan during 2008, of which 29 took place after August 31, 2008, killing 385 people. However, only nine of the 36 strikes hit their actual targets, killing 12 wanted al-Qaeda leaders.

The first successful predator strike had killed Abu Laith al Libi, a senior military commander of al-Qaeda who was targeted in North Waziristan on January 29, 2008.

The second successful attack in Bajaur had killed Abu Sulayman Jazairi, al-Qaeda’s external operations chief, on March 14, 2008.

The third attack in South Waziristan on July 28, 2008, had killed Abu Khabab al Masri, al-Qaeda’s weapons of mass destruction chief.

The fourth successful attack in South Waziristan on August 13, 2008, had killed al-Qaeda leader Abdur Rehman.

The fifth predator strike carried out in North Waziristan near Miranshah on Sept 8, 2008 had killed three al-Qaeda leaders, Abu Haris, Abu Hamza, and Zain Ul Abu Qasim.

The sixth successful predator hit in the South Waziristan region on October 2008 had killed Khalid Habib, a key leader of al-Qaeda’s paramilitary Shadow Army.

The seventh such attack conducted in North Waziristan on October 31, 2008 had killed Abu Jihad al Masri, a top leader of the Egyptian Islamic group.

The eighth successful predator strike had killed al-Qaeda leader Abdullah Azzam al Saudi in east of North Waziristan on November 19, 2008.

The ninth and the last successful drone attack of 2008, carried out in the Ali Khel region just outside Miramshah in North Waziristan on November 22, 2008, had killed al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubair al Masri and his Pakistani fugitive accomplice Rashid Rauf.

According to the figures compiled by the Pakistani authorities, a total of 537 people have been killed in 50 incidents of cross-border US predator strikes since January 1, 2008 to April 8, 2009, averaging 34 killings per month and 11 killings per attack. The average per month killings in predator strikes during 12 months of 2008 stood at 32 while the average per attack killings in the 36 drone strikes for the same year stood at 11.

Similarly, 152 people have been killed in 14 incidents of cross-border predator attacks in the tribal areas in the first 99 days of 2009, averaging 38 killings per month and 11 killings per attack.

Since September 3, 2008, it appears that the Americans have upped their attacks in Pakistani tribal areas in a bid to disrupt the al-Qaeda and the Taliban network, which they allege is being used to launch cross border ambushes against the Nato forces in Afghanistan.

The American forces stationed in Afghanistan carried out nine aerial strikes between September 3 and September 25, 2008, killing 57 people and injuring 38 others. The attacks were launched on September 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, 15, 17, 22 and September 27. However, the September 3, 2008 American action was unique in the sense that two CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters landed in the village of Zawlolai in the South Waziristan Agency with ground troops from the US Special Operation Forces, fired at three houses and killed 17, including five women and four sleeping children.

Besides the two helicopters carrying the US Special Forces Commandos, two jet fighters and two gun-ship helicopters provided the air cover for the half-an-hour American operation, more than a kilometre inside the Pakistani border.

The last predator strike on [April 8, 2009] was carried out hardly a few hours after the Pakistani authorities had rejected an American proposal for joint operations in the tribal areas against terrorism and militancy, as differences of opinion between the two countries over various aspects of the war on terror came out into the open for the first time.

The proposal came from two top US visiting officials, presidential envoy for the South Asia Richard Holbrooke and Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen. However, the Pakistani military and political leadership reportedly rejected the proposal and adopted a tough posture against a barrage of increasing US predator strikes and criticism emanating from Washington, targeting the Pakistan Army and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and creating doubts about their sincerity in the war on terror and the fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban.

LAT : U.S. missile strikes said to take heavy toll on Al Qaeda

U.S. missile strikes said to take heavy toll on Al Qaeda

Predator drone attacks in northwest Pakistan have increased sharply since Bush last year stopped seeking Pakistan's permission. Obama may keep pace as officials speak of confusion in Al Qaeda ranks.

By Greg Miller | March 21, 2009

Reporting from Washington -- An intense, six-month campaign of Predator strikes in Pakistan has taken such a toll on Al Qaeda that militants have begun turning violently on one another out of confusion and distrust, U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials say.

The pace of the Predator attacks has accelerated dramatically since August, when the Bush administration made a previously undisclosed decision to abandon the practice of obtaining permission from the Pakistani government before launching missiles from the unmanned aircraft.

Since Aug. 31, the CIA has carried out at least 38 Predator strikes in northwest Pakistan, compared with 10 reported attacks in 2006 and 2007 combined, in what has become the CIA's most expansive targeted killing program since the Vietnam War.

Because of its success, the Obama administration is set to continue the accelerated campaign despite civilian casualties that have fueled anti-U.S. sentiment and prompted protests from the Pakistani government.

"This last year has been a very hard year for them," a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official said of Al Qaeda militants, whose operations he tracks in northwest Pakistan. "They're losing a bunch of their better leaders. But more importantly, at this point they're wondering who's next."

U.S. intelligence officials said they see clear signs that the Predator strikes are sowing distrust within Al Qaeda. "They have started hunting down people who they think are responsible" for security breaches, the senior U.S. counter-terrorism official said, discussing intelligence assessments on condition of anonymity. "People are showing up dead or disappearing."

The counter-terrorism official and others, who also spoke anonymously, said the U.S. assessments were based in part on reports from the region provided by the Pakistani intelligence service.

The stepped-up Predator campaign has killed at least nine senior Al Qaeda leaders and dozens of lower-ranking operatives, in what U.S. officials described as the most serious disruption of the terrorist network since 2001.

Among those killed since August are Rashid Rauf, the suspected mastermind of an alleged 2006 transatlantic airliner plot; Abu Khabab Masri, who was described as the leader of Al Qaeda's chemical and biological weapons efforts; Khalid Habib, an operations chief allegedly involved in plots against the West; and Usama al-Kini, who allegedly helped orchestrate the September bombing of the Marriott Hotel in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

Al Qaeda's founders remain elusive. U.S. spy agencies have not had reliable intelligence on the location of Osama bin Laden since he slipped across the Pakistan border seven years ago, officials said. His deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, remains at large after escaping a missile strike in 2006.

But the Predator campaign has depleted the organization's operational tier. Many of the dead are longtime loyalists who had worked alongside Bin Laden and were part of the network's hasty migration into Pakistan in 2001 after U.S.-led forces invaded neighboring Afghanistan. They are being replaced by less experienced recruits who have had little, if any, history with Bin Laden and Zawahiri.

The offensive has been aided by technological advances and an expansion of the CIA's Predator fleet. The drones take off and land at military airstrips in Pakistan, but are operated by CIA pilots in the United States. Some of the pilots -- who also pull the triggers on missiles -- are contractors hired by the agency, former officials said.

Predators were originally designed as video surveillance aircraft that could hover over a target from high altitudes. But new models are outfitted with additional intelligence gear that has enabled the CIA to confirm the identities of targets even when they are inside buildings and can't be seen through the Predator's lens.

The agency is also working more closely with U.S. special operations teams and military intelligence aircraft that hug the Pakistan border, collecting pictures and intercepting radio or cellphone signals.

Even so, officials said that the surge in strikes has less to do with expanded capabilities than with the decision to skip Pakistani approval. "We had the data all along," said a former CIA official who oversaw Predator operations in Pakistan. "Finally we took off the gloves."

The Bush administration's decision to expand the Predator program was driven by growing alarm over Al Qaeda's resurgence in Pakistan's tribal belt.

A 2006 peace agreement between Islamabad and border tribes had allowed the network to shore up its finances, resume training operatives and reestablish ties to satellite groups.

The Bush administration had been constrained by its close relationship with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who argued against aggressive U.S. action. But by last summer, after a series of disrupted terrorist plots in Europe had been traced to Pakistan, there were calls for a new approach.

"At a certain point there was common recognition of the untenable nature of what was happening in the FATA," said a former senior U.S. counter-terrorism official, referring to Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas where Al Qaeda is based.

The breaking point came when Musharraf was forced to resign mid-August, officials said. Within days, President Bush had approved the new rules: Rather than requiring Pakistan's permission to order a Predator strike, the agency was allowed to shoot first.

The effect was immediate.

There were two Predator strikes on Aug. 31, and three more by the end of the week. CIA officials had suspected that their targets were being tipped by Pakistani intelligence to pending U.S. strikes; bypassing the government ended that concern.

It also eliminated delays. Former CIA officials said getting permission from Pakistani authorities could take a day or more, sometimes causing the agency to lose track of the target. The missed opportunities were costly because it often took months to assemble the intelligence necessary for a strike.

In 2006, for example, the CIA got word from Pakistan's intelligence service that Habib was staying at a compound in Miram Shah. A CIA officer involved in the hunt said he spent weeks at a Pakistani military outpost near the compound, monitoring images from a Predator on a flat-screen device.

"We had a Predator up there for hours at a stretch, just watching, watching," the official said. The agency studied the layout of the compound, trying to determine who slept where, and scanning the surrounding roads for the arrival of Habib's truck.

"They took a shot at the compound a week after I left," the official said. "We got some bodyguards, but he was not there." It took more than two years for the agency to catch up to Habib again. He was killed in a Predator strike in South Waziristan in October.

Pakistan has repeatedly criticized the Predator campaign; the attacks are reported to have caused dozens of civilian casualties. "Drone attacks are counterproductive," said Nadeem Kiani, press attache at the Pakistan Embassy in Washington. Rather than firing missiles, Kiani said, the United States should provide intelligence to Pakistan "and we will take immediate action."

U.S. officials say that despite such complaints, the Pakistani government's opposition has been muted because the CIA has expanded its targeting to include militant groups that threaten the government in Islamabad.

The success of the Predator campaign has prompted some counter-terrorism officials to speak of a post-Al Qaeda era in which its regional affiliates -- in North Africa and elsewhere -- are all that remain after the center collapses.

"You can imagine a horizon in which Al Qaeda proper no longer exists," said Juan Zarate, former counter-terrorism advisor to Bush. "If you were to continue on this pace, and get No. 1 and No. 2, Al Qaeda is dead. You can't resuscitate that organization as we know it without its senior leadership."

How to achieve that end without undermining the government in Pakistan is a key issue the Obama administration faces as it searches for a new strategy in the region. In a tour of the region, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta arrived in Islamabad Saturday for talks with Pakistani intelligence officials.

"There's a risk of driving [Al Qaeda and its allies] farther and farther into Pakistan, into cities," said Daniel Byman, a former CIA analyst and terrorism expert at Georgetown University. "There's a danger of weakening the government we want to bolster. It's already to some degree a house of cards."

In fact, the stepped-up strikes have coincided with a deterioration in the security situation in Pakistan. Over the last six months, Taliban elements tied to Al Qaeda have carried out increasingly bold attacks, including in Islamabad, and a recent truce between the government and militants in the Swat Valley was seen by some observers as a capitulation to Islamic hard-liners.

But proponents of the strikes argue that the opportunity to cripple Al Qaeda, perhaps permanently, outweighs concerns over the strains being placed on Pakistan.

"Is this really helping when you have radical militants controlling more territory than ever before?" Zarate said. "That is a good question, but that is a different question from whether this is effective against Al Qaeda."

So far, that appears to be the prevailing view within the Obama administration. A strike in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province last Sunday was the second in four days, and the ninth this year.

Panetta, asked about the drone aircraft attacks in a meeting with reporters last month, refused to discuss the Predator program directly, but said, "Nothing has changed our efforts to go after terrorists, and nothing will change those efforts."

greg.miller@latimes.com

Observer : UK agents 'colluded with torture in Pakistan'

UK agents 'colluded with torture in Pakistan'

• Intelligence sources 'confirm abuse'
• Extent of Mohamed injuries revealed

Mark Townsend | The Observer | February 22, 2009

A shocking new report alleges widespread complicity between British security agents and their Pakistani counterparts who have routinely engaged in the torture of suspects.

In the study, which will be published next month by the civil liberties group Human Rights Watch, at least 10 Britons are identified who have been allegedly tortured in Pakistan and subsequently questioned by UK intelligence officials. It warns that more British cases may surface and that the issue of Pakistani terrorism suspects interrogated by British agents is likely to "run much deeper".

The report will further embarrass the foreign secretary, David Miliband, who has repeatedly said the UK does not condone torture. He has been under fire for refusing to disclose US documents relating to the treatment of Guantánamo detainee and former British resident Binyam Mohamed. The documents are believed to contain evidence about the torture of Mohamed and British complicity in his maltreatment. Mohamed will return to Britain this week. Doctors who examined him in Guantánamo found evidence of prolonged physical and mental mistreatment.

Ali Dayan Hasan, who led the Pakistan-based inquiry, said sources within the country's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), the Intelligence Bureau and the military security services had provided "confirmation and information" relating to British collusion in the interrogation of terrorism suspects.

Hasan said the Human Rights Watch (HRW) evidence collated from Pakistan intelligence officials indicated a "systemic" modus operandi among British security services, involving a significant number of UK agents from MI5 rather than maverick elements. Different agents were deployed to interview different suspects, many of whom alleged that prior to interrogation by British officials they were tortured by Pakistani agents.

Among the 10 identified cases of British citizens and residents mentioned in the report is Rangzieb Ahmed, 33, from Rochdale, who claims he was tortured by Pakistani intelligence agents before being questioned by two MI5 officers. Ahmed was convicted of being a member of al-Qaida at Manchester crown court, yet the jury was not told that three of the fingernails of his left hand had been removed. The response from MI5 to the allegations that it had colluded in Ahmed's torture were heard in camera, however, after the press and the public were excluded from the proceedings. Ahmed's description of the cell in which he claims he was tortured closely matches that where Salahuddin Amin, 33, from Luton, says he was tortured by ISI officers between interviews with MI5 officers.

Zeeshan Siddiqui, 25, from London, who was detained in Pakistan in 2005, also claims he was interviewed by British intelligence agents during a period in which he was tortured.

Other cases include that of a London medical student who was detained in Karachi and tortured after the July 2005 attacks in London. Another case involving Britons allegedly tortured in Pakistan and questioned by UK agents involves a British Hizb ut-Tahrir supporter.

Rashid Rauf, from Birmingham, was detained in Pakistan and questioned over suspected terrorist activity in 2006. He was reportedly killed after a US drone attack in Pakistan's tribal regions, though his body has never been found.

Hasan said: "What the research suggests is that these are not incidents involving one particular rogue officer or two, but rather an array of individuals involved over a period of several years.

"The issue is not just British complicity in the torture of British citizens, it is the issue of British complicity in the torture period. We know of at least 10 cases, but the complicity probably runs much deeper because it involves a series of terrorism suspects who are Pakistani. This is the heart of the matter.

"They are not the same individuals [MI5 officers] all the time. I know that the people who have gone to see Siddiqui in Peshawar are not the same people who have seen Ahmed in Rawalpindi."

Last night the government faced calls to clarify precisely its relationship with Pakistan's intelligence agencies, which are known to routinely use torture.

A Foreign Office spokesman said that an investigation by the British security services had revealed "there is nothing to suggest they have engaged in torture in Pakistan". He added: "Our policy is not to participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture, or inhumane or degrading treatment, for any purpose."

But former shadow home secretary David Davis said the claims from Pakistan served to "reinforce" allegations that UK authorities, at the very least, ignored Pakistani torture techniques.

"The British agencies can no longer pretend that 'Hear no evil, see no evil' is applicable in the modern world," he added.

Last week HRW submitted evidence to parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights. The committee is to question Miliband and Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, over a legal loophole which appears to offer British intelligence officers immunity in the UK for any crimes committed overseas.

It has also emerged that New York-based HRW detailed its concerns in a letter to the UK government last October but has yet to receive a response.

The letter arrived at the same time that the Attorney General was tasked with deciding if Scotland Yard should begin a criminal investigation into British security agents' treatment of Binyam Mohamed. Crown prosecutors are currently weighing up the evidence.

Hasan said that evidence indicated a considerable number of UK officers were involved in interviewing terrorism suspects after they were allegedly tortured. He told the Observer: "We don't know who the individuals [British intelligence officers] were, but when you have different personnel coming in and behaving in a similar fashion it implies some level of systemic approach to the situation, rather than one eager beaver deciding it is absolutely fine for someone to be beaten or hung upside down."

He accused British intelligence officers of turning a blind eye as UK citizens endured torture at the hands of Pakistan's intelligence agencies.

"They [the British] have met the suspect ... and have conspicuously failed to notice that someone is in a state of high physical distress, showing signs of injury. If you are a secret service agent and fail to notice that their fingernails are missing, you ought to be fired."

Britain's former chief legal adviser, Lord Goldsmith, said that the Foreign Office would want to examine any British involvement in torture allegations very carefully and, if necessary, bring individuals "to book" to ensure such behaviour was "eradicated".

BNP : Mumbai Terrorists Told to “Kill Whites, Especially British and Americans”

Mumbai Terrorists Told to “Kill Whites, Especially British and Americans”

by BNP News | November 30, 2008

The sole surviving terrorist of the Mumbai attacks has told interrogators that he was instructed to “kill whites, especially British and American tourists” before taking hostages.

Azam Amir Kasab, 21, from Pakistan, said the attacks were planned six months ago and were intended to kill 5,000 people. Surviving the massacre after trying to flee, the Pakistani-born terrorist has made a full confession to police.

He revealed that the ten terrorists, who were highly trained in marine assault and crept into the city by boat, had planned to blow up the Taj Mahal Palace hotel after first executing British and American tourists and then taking hostages.

He described how its mastermind briefed the group to “target whites, preferably Americans and British.”

Kasab described how he and an accomplice sprayed machine-gun fire around a busy railway station, killing dozens of people, before intending to move to the exclusive district of Malabar Hill, where they planned to “take VIPs hostage.”

Four men went to the Taj hotel, two to the Jewish centre of Nariman House, Kasab and another man set off by taxi towards the railway station, and two headed for the Leopold restaurant.

While his colleagues were executing hostages at the Taj, Kasab and Ismail first opened fire with their assault rifles at around 10.20pm, killing dozens of people standing at Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station.

Then they hijacked a police 4×4, killing the two officers inside. Kasab told investigators they continued their killing spree by attacking a petrol station and blowing up a taxi before being stopped.

“I have done right,” he told investigators. “I have no regrets.”

At least 22 foreigners are known to have died, including victims from Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia, Italy, Singapore, Thailand and France. It is expected that the final death toll will be over 300.

Claims that up to seven of the terrorists could have been British men of Pakistani origin, who had connections to West Yorkshire, were being widely discounted.

A top Indian official, Maharashtra state chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, said that there was “no authentic information” to suggest that any British citizens were involved, contradicting an earlier claim he had made.

An earlier news report said that one of the terrorists had been working at the Taj hotel as a kitchen porter for up to eight months before the attacks and had produced a British passport during his job interview. This was strongly denied by the hotel management.

* A banned Islamic terrorist group funded with cash raised in British mosques is believed to be behind the Mumbai attacks.

Kashmiri separatists Lashkar-e-Taiba, ‘The Army of the Righteous’, which has strong links to Al Qaeda, is accused of previous terrorist outrages in India.

Intercepted telephone and radio communications before and during the latest attacks apparently suggest a link. Indian officials say at least one of the gunmen captured after the attacks is part of a Lashkar network.

Lashkar-e-Taiba has been blamed for violence throughout India, including the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament building in New Delhi and a strike at an amusement park in Hyderabad in 2007. It is accused of being behind a series of train bombings in Mumbai in 2006, which claimed almost 200 lives.

In 2006, a Coventry-based Muslim was sentenced to nine years in jail for conspiring to provide funds for its terrorist activities.

*It has also been reported that British Intelligence (the same ones who blame whites for Islamic extremism) bosses are set to launch a probe into suspected links between Birmingham-born militant Rashid Rauf and the Mumbai terror attack.

Security forces in India will examine connections between two Islamist Kashmiri groups thought to be behind the Mumbai assault, which has claimed almost 200 lives, and Rauf, who was known to be a member of both terror groups.

Rauf, 27, from Ward End, Birmingham — an Al Qaeda suspect said to be the “key player” behind the alleged liquid bomb plot to blow up transatlantic airliners — was killed in a missile strike last Saturday in North Western Pakistan by an unmanned US drone.

Sources have now revealed that he was planning a major attack at the time of his death, and that the Mumbai murders show all the hallmarks of one of Rauf’s “terror spectacular” plots.

The Indian Mujahidin, which carried out a blast in Delhi in September and warned that they would strike next in Mumbai, is understood to have been behind this week’s terror outrage.

The group is made up of several different militant organisations, the most dangerous of which are the Pakistani-based Kashmiri “freedom” movements Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM). Rauf was known to have strong links to both organisations.

He married a relative of JEM’s founder and worked with LET to train British jihadis who travelled to Pakistan. London 7/7 bombers Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed Siddique Khan both studied at an LET madrassa near Lahore in 2004.

Sunday Mercury : Was Birmingham-born militant Rashid Rauf behind Mumbai attack?

Was Birmingham-born militant Rashid Rauf behind Mumbai attack?

By Ben Goldby | November 29, 2008

INTELLIGENCE bosses are set to launch a probe into suspected links between Birmingham-born militant Rashid Rauf and last week’s terror attack in Mumbai.

Security forces in India will examine connections between two Islamist Kashmiri groups thought to be behind the Mumbai assault, which has claimed almost 200 lives, and Rauf, who was known to be a member of both terror groups.

Rauf, 27, from Ward End, Birmingham –an Al Qaeda suspect said to be the “key player” behind the alleged liquid bomb plot to blow up transatlantic airliners – was killed in a missile strike last Saturday in North Western Pakistan by an unmanned US drone.

Sources have now revealed that he was planning a major attack at the time of his death, and that the Mumbai murders show all the hallmarks of one of Rauf’s “terror spectacular” plots.

The Indian Mujahidin, which carried out a blast in Delhi in September and warned that they would strike next in Mumbai, is understood to have been behind this week’s terror outrage.

The group is made up of several different militant organisations, the most dangerous of which are the Pakistani-based Kashmiri “freedom” movements Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM).

Rauf was known to have strong links to both organisations.

He married a relative of JEM’s founder and worked with LET to train British jihadis who travelled to Pakistan. London 7/7 bombers Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed Siddique Khan both studied at an LET madrassa near Lahore in 2004.

Last night, a terror expert told the Sunday Mercury: “It is understood that this attack in Mumbai is the work of the Indian Mujahidin, based on plans and support from Kashmiri groups based in Pakistan.

“The planning seems to have been done by an Islamist militant group called Lashkar-e-Toiba and they have close links to other Kashmiri fighters including Jaish-e-Mohammed.

“In Rashid Rauf we have a man who dreamed up an alleged plot to blow up 10 transatlantic planes. We know he plotted spectacular attacks and we know that we was planning a terror operation when he was killed.

“This attack in Mumbai, with the synchronised terror strikes in multiple locations, is certainly consistent with his approach to militant tactics.”

Rauf fled to the tribal areas of North Western Pakistan in April, 2002 as West Midlands Police tried to question him over the death of his uncle Mohammed Saeed in Alum Rock.

The former Washwood Heath High School pupil sought sanctuary in his family’s ancestral village of Haveli Bagal after he was named as the prime suspect in his uncle’s murder.

He married a relative of JEM founder and spiritual leader Maulana Masood Azhar in 2003 and turned to radical Islam.

Intelligence reports say he took an active role in planning terror attacks and was the alleged ringleader of the liquid bomb plot to blow up 10 jetliners over the Atlantic Ocean.

In August 2006, as spooks were monitoring the alleged airline bomb plot, Rauf, who was under surveillance by both British and Pakistani secret services, was connected by officers to LET and Al Qaeda and was known to be transferring cash and instructions to members in the UK.

Although charges over the transatlantic plot were later dropped against Rauf, the CIA continued to track his activities and he was held by Pakistani police as detectives back in Birmingham sought his extradition over his uncle’s murder.

But in December 2007 Rauf gave guards the slip at a roadside Mosque after a hearing in Islamabad, and is believed to have fled back to the lawless tribal regions of North Western Pakistan.

At the time of his death Rauf was meeting with Egyptian extremist and senior Al Qaeda field commander Abu Zubair al-Masri in the tribal heartland of Waziristan.

Indian investigators will now probe the significance of that meeting, thought to have been a “council of war” to discuss jihadi attacks against western targets, and examine connections between LET, JEM and the Mumbai attacks.

Officials in London have insisted that there is no evidence yet that Britons have taken part in the planning or execution of the Mumbai assault, although they cannot rule it out.

Around 30 counter terrorism officers from the Met Police have now been sent to India to help with the investigation.

Times : Intelligence chiefs were expecting Al-Qaeda spectacular

Intelligence chiefs were expecting Al-Qaeda spectacular

Michael Evans, Defence Editor | November 27, 2008

Western intelligence services have been expecting an al-Qaeda spectacular terrorist attack in this crucial period between the end of President George Bush’s administration and the succession of Barack Obama.

Signals intelligence “chatter” in recent weeks indicated that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organisation might be plotting an attack “to grab the headlines” before Mr Obama takes over in the White House on January 20.

British security and intelligence sources said there had been increasing concern, particularly in the United States, that a “terrorist spectacular” was on the cards.

The multiple attacks on Westerners in Bombay last night showed all the signs of an al-Qaeda strategy — picking on vulnerable Western “soft targets” but not in a country where there would be maximum security. The attacks on Western targets in Bali in 2002 when al-Qaeda-linked terrorists planted bombs in tourist-favoured restaurants and clubs was another example where the group switched its resources to achieve maximum impact.

Counter-terrorist experts last night said that India would have been selected for the latest spectacular “probably because that’s where al-Qaeda has sufficient resources to carry out an attack on this scale. They don’t choose for the sake of it, they look to see where they have the greatest capability and then order an attack,” a counter-terror expert told The Times.

The key to this latest attack was the search by the armed terrorists for American and British passport holders. With a reported 40 Britons held hostage, the terrorists have the upper hand. The counter-terrorist sources said targeting Bombay’s most luxurious hotels and a crowded railway station had all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda operation.

Bombay has been targeted before when 180 people died during a bomb attack on the railway station in 2006, but that incident was put down to militants, not al-Qaeda, and the Indian government suspected that the attackers had links to Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI.

This attack, however, involving the taking of Western hostages made it more likely that the operation’s masterminds were from the core leadership of al-Qaeda, which is based in the lawless tribal regions close to the Pakistan/Afghanistan border.

The Americans have been expecting an atrocity partly because of the recent CIA success in eliminating figures in al-Qaeda, using Predator unmanned drones, firing Hellfire missiles at hideouts in the tribal regions of Pakistan. About a dozen al-Qaeda figures have been killed this year.

Although an unknown group claimed responsibility last night, the taking of Western hostages and the deliberate seeking out of American and British citizens indicated a “typical al-Qaeda-style activity”, according to security sources.

Other sources said India was the home of a complicated network of terrorists and it might be too early to jump to the conclusion that it was an al-Qaeda operation. “It seems to be a highly opportunistic attack,” one source said.

However, this is traditionally the way al-Qaeda works. The leadership decides an attack should take place and leaves its franchise operators to decide how best to carry it out. Many of the gunmen appeared to be young but they also seemed confident, suggesting that they were well trained.

As the unprecedented scale of the attacks became clear last night, it looked to be the most co-ordinated terrorist operation since the targeting of the Twin Towers in New York in 2001.

Dozens of gunmen were involved in up to 19 different attacks, although the main focus seemed to be the taking of foreign hostages and detaining them in two of Bombay’s most prestigious hotels.

Judging by the apparent cockiness of at least one of the gunmen caught looking into television cameras, these terrorists were clearly prepared to die for their cause.

Al-Qaeda as an organisation has proved in the past that it has the capability to coordinate multiple attacks. Last night an organisation calling itself Deecan Mujahideen claimed responsibility but, as in the past when unknown groups came forward to admit involvement, the name was neither recognizable nor relevant. The sheer audacity of the terrorists are all familiar elements of al-Qaeda’.

Worst attacks

1979 Militant Islamic students in Iran stormed the US embassy in Tehran, taking 90 hostages. They demanded the extradition of the Shah of Iran from the US, to stand trial in Iran. The hostages were freed in 1981, after 444 days

1993 A car bomb exploded under the World Trade Centre, killing six and injuring more than 1,000. The mastermind, Ramzi Yousef, had been trained in Afghanistan

1995 Sarin nerve gas attack in Tokyo subway kills 12 and injures about 6,000. Shoko Asahara, founder of Aum cult responsible, sentenced to death in 2004

2001 Two aeroplanes hit the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre, a third crashed into the Pentagon and a fourth crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. Excluding the 19 hijackers, 2,974 people died in the attacks by al-Qaeda

2002 A terrorist attack on the island of Bali killed 202 people. Two bombs ripped through a nightclub area in Kuta district

2004 Ten bombs exploded on four commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 and leaving 1,800 injured. A group affiliated with al-Qaeda claimed responsibility

2005 Explosions on London’s transport system killed 52 and injured 700

(Source: Times archives)

Times : A death that plays into terrorists' hands

A death that plays into terrorists' hands

We cannot respect human rights at home and be complicit in the killing of suspects abroad

Patrick Mercer | November 26, 2008

Last Friday, a number of people with links to al-Qaeda were killed by a missile fired from a pilotless US drone on the Pakistan- Afghanistan border. It is thought that among the five dead was Rashid Rauf, a British citizen, who was suspected of being involved in a number of alleged terrorist plots and was being closely monitored by our intelligence services.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has not yet confirmed whether Rauf was the target of the attack. But whether he was or not, this strike raises significant questions about this Government's counter-terrorism policy and I shall be calling for clarification from the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, about British counter-terrorism operations in these circumstances.

I base my own experience on many tours in Northern Ireland and the Balkans as a regular soldier when I was involved in operations that led to the death and capture of terrorists - in short, where British troops were expected to act as judge, jury and executioner. Counter-terrorist operations had to be wholly within the law; if our enemies saw an opportunity to doubt their legality, they were never slow to exploit it.

The world of intelligence is murky - necessarily so. There is a series of carefully enforced procedures governing the passing of British intelligence to other agencies when it might lead to the death or torture of suspects. But as Richard Beeston wrote in The Times yesterday of US operations inside Pakistan: “As long as terrorist suspects... are being killed or live in fear of being killed [London] is quite happy to see the policy continue.” It is certainly possible that British intelligence services were in some way complicit in Rauf's death. Our forces do informally share information with intelligence services, such as those of Pakistan and the US.

I will not recite at length the arguments about the need to operate within the law other than to cite the chaos that ensued when the world was made to believe that British Forces were pursing a “shoot to kill” policy in Northern Ireland. Clearly, martyrdom is an important tool for the terrorist and once security forces step outside the law, the advantage passes from us to them.

All of this suggests a contradiction between what the Government says and what happens in practice, between courtroom justice and battlefield justice. It is unrealistic to expect our intelligence services to do anything other than co-operate fully with allies who are doing their best to defend the British people, unless they are given firm guidance to the contrary. The Government must decide whether, when framing counter-terrorism laws, it wishes them to reflect what the security services actually do, or some higher legal principle. My experience is that if laws won't work they must be challenged, not simply accepted.

It has been disturbing to watch the Government twist and turn as it tries to design counter-terrorist legislation that will be truly effective. The UK does not use the death penalty or torture those whom we think might hold crucial information. Under the framework of the European Convention on Human Rights, judges in Strasbourg have prevented the deportation of terrorist suspects where there is a real risk of their being tortured abroad, regardless of the risk they pose to us and however undesirable they are considered to be.

Whether or not they have helped or hindered the fight against terrorism, these are our laws, agreed to and debated by Parliament.

If our Government is not allowed to deport an individual when there is a real risk of their being tortured abroad, surely our intelligence services should not be allowed to supply intelligence to other nations that don't hold such high standards?

What is the point of having strict human rights protections and lengthy debates in Parliament about counter-terrorism legislation if, in practice, they are ignored? What is the point of negotiating memorandums of understanding with countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Libya - in which those governments undertake not to torture terror suspects deported from Britain - which have not been used since 2005?

We are left with the mess of control orders and the sort of nonsense that surrounded the prosecution of Abu Hamza. Despite all the Government's new terror legislation, he was eventually prosecuted for soliciting murder under a law from 1861.

The Government must make up its mind. Either our laws are helping the fight against terrorism, in which case they must be honoured in practice, or they are hindering the fight and they must be changed - and we must have an honest public and parliamentary debate about them.

I have no sympathy with terrorists, but my experience taught me that they must be fought within the law.

Each extrajudicial killing will hand a propaganda victory to our enemies that could outweigh any military benefits achieved by destroying the target. At times this is hard and frustrating, but the battle against terrorism cannot be won by bombs and bullets alone.

Patrick Mercer is Conservative MP for Newark & Retford and a former Shadow Minister for Security

Telegraph : Rashid Rauf was linked to al-Qaeda's number two Ayman al-Zawahiri

Rashid Rauf was linked to al-Qaeda's number two Ayman al-Zawahiri

A British al-Qaeda suspect reportedly killed by a US missile strike in a Pakistani tribal area was linked to the group's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, according to officials.

By Isambard Wilkinson in Islamabad | November 24, 2008

Rashid Rauf and a Saudi militant called Abu Zubair al-Masri were among five killed in a missile attack in North Waziristan on Saturday.

Rauf, a British national, was alleged to have been the mastermind of an al-Qaeda plot to blow up passenger aircraft in mid-air after they left London bound for the United States.

There was no independent corroboration of his death but local Pakistani intelligence officials and US intelligence officials believed he was dead, according to a senior Pakistani military source.

Kamal Shah, the senior civil servant in the interior ministry, said: "There is no independent confirmation but Rauf is believed to be dead." Hashmat Habib, Rauf's lawyer, said that villagers in Rauf's ancestral village in Mirpur district in Kashmir, had gathered to offer condolences to his client's family.

The military source claimed that the operation had been conducted entirely using US intelligence assets.

He said that Pakistani intelligence had known that Rauf was "moving between North and South Waziristan".

"This has come from their (America's) end. Both of them [Rauf and Misri] were being tracked. We were not involved in this attack," he said.

Pakistan has officially protested to the United States that missile strikes violate its sovereign territory, although some officials say there was a tacit understanding between the two militaries to allow such action.

"In fact, for some time now the US has totally by-passed our [intelligence] agencies," he added.

A Pakistani intelligence official said that the US believed that Rauf was staying with a group connected to Zawahiri. Zawahiri is believed by American officials to operate from Pakistan's lawless, tribal border areas.

A US missile strike was launched against him in the tribal agency of Bajaur in 2006 but he escaped unharmed.

The information minister, Sherry Rehman, confirmed that Rauf and Misri were targeted in the raid. She did not elaborate.

Rehman reiterated her government's complaint that missile attacks, apparently launched from unmanned aircraft, are fanning anti- Americanism and Islamic extremism tearing at both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"It would have been better if our authorities had been alerted for local action," said Ms Rehman. "Drone incursions create a strong backlash."

Rauf, who is of Pakistani origin, has been on the run since last December, when he escaped from police escorting him back to jail after an extradition hearing in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.

Britain was seeking his extradition ostensibly as a suspect in the 2002 killing of his uncle there, but Rauf had allegedly been in contact with a group in Britain planning to smuggle liquid explosives onto trans-Atlantic flights and also with a suspected al-Qaeda mastermind of the plot in Afghanistan.

Assyrian News Agency : Plot Thins In The War On Terror

Plot Thins In The War On Terror

from Investors Business Daily | November 25, 2008

Rashid Rauf, mastermind of the 2006 trans-Atlantic airline bomb plot, became the latest al-Qaida casualty when a missile launched from a Predator drone struck a tribesman's house in the village of Alikhel in North Waziristan.

If Rauf believed he had found sanctuary there, he was sadly mistaken. There have been at least 20 such strikes in the last three months as the Bush administration seeks to thwart the ability of militants to fuel the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and deny al-Qaida plotters a safe haven.

The attack on Rauf, which also killed Egyptian al-Qaida operative Abu Zubair al-Masri, came within days of another strike in the Bannu district, deeper in Pakistani territory and outside the lawless tribal areas.

Among those killed in that attack, according to Radio Australia, was Abdullah Azam al-Saudi, an Arab whom U.S. intelligence officials identified as the main link between al-Qaida's senior command and Taliban networks in the Pakistani border region.

Rauf was the architect of the "liquid bomb" plot that now forces travelers to limit fluids to 3.5 ounces in carry-on baggies. He was arrested in 2006 in Pakistan in the bomb plot and was headed back to jail in Islamabad after an extradition hearing, when authorities allowed him to stop and pray at a mosque uncuffed.

The plot targeted seven flights from Heathrow Airport in London to New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto and Montreal operated by United Airlines, Air Canada and American Airlines. The plan was for different passengers to carry peroxide-based liquid explosive in drinks and other containers and detonators disguised as electronic devices and combine them on board.

Also biting the dust in recent days was Hajji Hammadi, a senior al-Qaida in Iraq leader who was chosen as the emir of Karmah in eastern Anbar province by none other than Abu Musab al-Zarqawi himself. He led an al-Qaida unit in the second battle of Fallujah, where more than 2,000 al-Qaida in Iraq and other insurgents were killed clearing the city.

Hammadi had "connections with the country's legacy al-Qaida leadership" and was "responsible for planning and conducting multiple attacks on coalition forces, Iraqi police, Iraqi government officials and Iraqi citizens," according to U.S. military spokesmen.

Karmah was one of the last areas brought under control by U.S. and Iraqi forces as part of the Anbar Awakening.

Hammadi fell victim to hunter-killer teams of Task Force 88 earlier this month and was the fourth senior al-Qaida leader killed in Iraq and neighboring Syria over the past six weeks. U.S. special operations forces also killed Abu Qaswarah al-Skani, al-Qaida in Iraq's second in command, during a raid in Mosul.

On Oct. 27, Task Force 88 conducted a daylight raid into Syria in an attempt to capture Abu Ghadiya, al-Qaida's senior facilitator and logistics coordinator for foreign fighters entering Iraq. He died in the ensuing firefight.

Abu Ghazwan, once senior commander in the regions north of Baghdad, was killed in a raid by Iraqi soldiers and the Sons of Iraq on Nov. 7. In 2006 and 2007, this key al-Masri associate led attempts to take control of Baghdad.

The idea that the U.S. hasn't taken the battle to the enemy sanctuaries in Syria and Pakistan, or that we are losing control of Afghanistan, isn't exactly accurate. The terrorists we fight are scurrying about as we lift the remaining rocks they hide under, but there's no place for them to run.

Online News (Pakistan) : Rashid Rauf’s wife demands Govt to hand over dead body

Rashid Rauf’s wife demands Govt to hand over dead body

November 23, 2008

PESHAWAR: Rashid Rauf's wife Umat-ul-Warood has urged Government to hand over dead body of her husband for burial, who died during a American drone attack on Saturday.

Sources informed here on Sunday, that the kin of Rashid Rauf (a Proclaimed Offender of London plane conspiracy case) arrived in Peshawar from Bahawalpur to receive the dead body.

On the other hand, Government sources has expressed their ignorance relating to the arrival of Rashid Rauf's relative to collect his dead body.

It was also noted that Rashid Rauf was residing in C-Block of model town Bahawalpur and his other relatives were also residing in Bahawalpur and Azad Kashmir. He has two daughters Nisbah Fatima of 2 years and Saleh Khalid of 3 years respectively

It is worth-while mentioning here that Rashid Rauf the suspected ringleader of a 2006 plot to blow up trans-atlantic airliners using liquid explosives by using liquid explosive was among the 5 who were killed in a another missile [strike] by US drones in North Waziristan on Saturday.

Guardian : On the front line in war on Pakistan's Taliban

On the front line in war on Pakistan's Taliban

High in the mountainous north west provinces of Pakistan, government forces are waging a bitter war against Taliban militants who have made the region a stronghold. As US predator drones criss-cross the sky overhead, troops on the ground endure a daily confrontation with suicide bomber attacks, mortar fire and the piercing cold

Jason Burke | The Observer | November 16, 2008

Ali Hussein, a sergeant in the Sindh Regiment of the Pakistani Army, peers over the lip of his sandbagged machinegun pit to see the following: a muddy patch of farmland divided into a chaos of individual fields, a row of slender birch trees, a dry river valley and, almost invisible among the trees half a mile away, a village called Khusar. Over his head, shells screech through the air towards its half-dozen mud-walled houses.

A rocket-propelled grenade cracks out in solitary, futile response, leaving a trail of spiralling smoke in the chill dawn air. There is the continual crackle of small-arms fire, the distant thud of a mortar.

Khusar lies in Bajaur, a 500-square-mile jumble of valleys and hills high on Pakistan's north-western border with Afghanistan. Few outside Pakistan had heard of Bajaur until recently. But now the fighting here - the biggest single clash of conventional forces and Islamic militants anywhere - is being watched closely around the globe.

The battle of Bajaur has huge local and international implications. Locally, it is a critical test for the new Pakistani civilian government of Asif Ali Zardari, the controversial widower of Benazir Bhutto. The recent bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad is thought to be a response to the Bajaur offensive. Regionally, the battle is a chance for the Pakistani Army to rebut allegations that it is dragging its feet in the fight against international extremism. Internationally, the fight is crucial for the 40-nation coalition fighting in Afghanistan. Not only will its result determine who controls the supply route that crosses the Khyber Pass just to its south - where militants hijacked a 60-vehicle Nato convoy last week - but it will also show if the semi-autonomous 'tribal agencies' that line the mountainous zones on the Pakistan side of the frontier can be stabilised. It is there that al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban leadership are hiding. Peace in Afghanistan will remain a distant prospect until the frontier is calmed.

So the efforts of men such as Sergeant Ali Hussein are being watched very closely. When President-elect Barack Obama takes office, the file of Pakistan, a nuclear-capable state of 173 million, will top the pile in the foreign affairs in-tray. According to Bruce Reidel, a former CIA analyst who has recently been appointed Obama's adviser on the region, 'every nightmare that worries Americans about the 21st century comes together in Pakistan in a unique and combustible way'.

To reach the combat zone in Bajaur, the Pakistani Army goes the long way round. Last week The Observer travelled with it. Dozens of soldiers have been killed with remote-controlled or suicide bombs on these roads in recent months. A single Jeep takes four hours, the mammoth supply convoys inching along the mountain roads take nine.

The convoys leave the border city of Peshawar - which has its own problems. Fighting in the surrounding countryside has spilled into urban areas. Last week, a suicide bomb in the city's stadium killed four people, an Iranian diplomat was kidnapped, two journalists were wounded in an ambush and gunmen murdered an American aid worker. 'It's going to be a bloody few weeks and months,' said Iqbal Khattak, a Peshawar newspaper editor.

From the city's crowded bazaars the convoys head east, taking the new motorway that leads to Islamabad, the capital, 120 miles away. Its six lanes slice through haphazard fields of sugar cane and wheat where peasants work with hoes and bullock-drawn ploughs. A few yards from the hard shoulder, beyond a line of posts now stripped of fencing by scrap metal thieves, lie villages where the only concrete building is the mosque and the main fuel is dried manure.

Turning north, the convoys head towards the first hills of the Hindu Kush. The land becomes poorer, the road narrower, the towns scruffier. A steep climb leads into the valley of Malakand, where more than a century ago a young British army officer called Winston Churchill fought the local tribes in operations like those under way along the frontier today. The relatively peaceful plains have been left behind.

Another two hours on winding roads across fast-flowing rivers and narrow passes and you reach Bajaur, a cluster of high, fertile valleys split by menacing ridges. Last week belts of rain lashed the dank fields and drenched the soldiers manning the many roadblocks around the agency's administrative centre of Khar, 15 miles back from the front.

Colonel Muhammad Nauman Saeed, who has 28 years of service, a greying beard and Sandhurst English, explains that, after weeks of operations, the mixed force of 4,000 troops and paramilitaries known as the Frontier Corps has pushed the militants back to positions that will be cut off when the snows come in a few weeks' time. The weather and a force of American and Afghan national army soldiers across the frontier will mean they are boxed in.

'Originally there were 5,000 militants and we have killed half of them at least,' the colonel said. His troops have lost 84 killed and 320 injured since the operation began.

A few hundred yards from his office, artillery fires salvos, sending orange flares of flame through the rain. From Khar, a dirt road leads to the front. Villages are deserted, the bazaars shut, the crops rot in the fields. Dozens of houses converted into strongholds by the militants have been demolished or occupied by the army. There is the constant rattle of small-arms fire, and the crack of rocket-propelled grenades and artillery overhead.

The front itself is a chaos of burnt-out homes, wrecked vehicles and pockets of bizarrely bucolic calm.

More than 200,000 civilians have fled and are now scattered in camps or living with relatives across the province.

Bajaur's recent history is repeated all along the frontier. In the aftermath of 2001, militants fleeing from Nato operations in Afghanistan, as well as Pakistan's own intermittent crackdowns on internal extremist groups, were able to exploit the social upheaval caused by conflict and economic change to establish themselves.

In Bajaur, local men formed bands around those with guns and access to cash, elbowing aside traditional tribal leaders. Militant leaders include a former teashop owner, a gunman, a known criminal and a minor cleric. One is from the violence-racked Kunar valley in Afghanistan. 'They are men from economically and socially marginalised elements in tribal society,' said a Peshawar-based expert and former senior bureaucrat, Khalid Aziz.

The disparate groups based themselves in the village of its chief and, with money and a little military training from al-Qaeda, soon established a miniature version of a hardline Islamist state, preaching jihad, closing girls' schools and DVD shops, and killing tribal leaders who stood in their way. According to Mohammed Shah, a former chief of security in the region, 'they are a loose federation rather than a unified movement'.

Al-Qaeda figures may have passed through Bajaur but did not stay. They did not need to. The brand of radical Islam that Osama bin Laden and others have succeeded in popularising in recent decades provided the glue for the various bands and the justification for the fight against their own government. The religious schools, which offer a free education, provided the footsoldiers. A skirmish this summer provided the spark for all-out war.

'They were not looking for a fight, but had prepared carefully for battle when it came', said Colonel Nauman. 'They are dug into complex, interlocking tunnel and bunker networks, and have huge reserves of ammunition.'

Bajaur, the northernmost of the seven tribal agencies along the frontier, had acted as a key entry point to and from Afghanistan, said Major-General Tariq Khan, the overall commander of the Bajaur operation, and was thus of 'immense strategic importance'.

A series of similar military operations over recent years has failed to pacify the tribal areas, often resulting in peace agreements controversial in Washington and Kabul. but lessons had been learnt, Khan said. The current operation would be 'the model' for the future. Last week troops started pushing into Mohmand, the next agency to the south.

Khan stressed the commitment of his troops. 'When our troops come into contact with the militants, they do not see them as Pakistanis or brother Muslims or whatever. They see them as the enemy. Those who have any doubts - and there are some - are those who have not come into contact with the reality on the ground.'

But the Pakistani Army still views the battles it is fighting against extremists very differently from Western strategists and policy-makers. Scores of private conversations with soldiers of all ranks reveal that few see themselves as fighting in a 'war on terror' that many of them abhor.

Many believe that India, Pakistan's long-term regional rival, and Afghanistan are manipulating the militants fighting in Pakistan. In a mirror image of the Western analysis that attributes the success of the Taliban in Afghanistan to their bases in Pakistan, the Pakistani officers blame the war in Afghanistan for their troubles at home.

Privately few have much good to say about the West either. Anti-American sentiment is widespread. Many - both on the front line and at senior levels - doubt that al-Qaeda was responsible for 9/11. Instead the officers and men interviewed by The Observer see their fight as a necessary struggle to purge their own nation of an internal threat. 'It is our war, not anyone else's,' said Colonel Nauman.

For many such officers, both the presence of al-Qaeda on their territory and the pressure from Washington to play a greater role in the war on terror complicate the situation. American money, technical assistance and equipment is welcome - the Pakistani military has received about £7bn from the US since 2001 - but interference on the ground is not. 'When it comes to operations in the tribal areas ... sometimes our agendas coincide, sometimes they do not,' admitted Major-General Khan.

Many oppose the remote-controlled missile strikes that, although they have killed many senior international militant figures, have enraged local people. Two villages hit in Bajaur agency in 2006 are now militant strongholds. The strikes are likely to continue, however. Western intelligence sources insist they have played a major role in disrupting potential terror attacks in the West and locally and have so demoralised al-Qaeda's leadership that key figures now sleep outside under trees and are convinced their organisation has been infiltrated.

One other key development being eagerly watched in Bajaur is the activity of local tribesmen who have formed so-called lashkars, traditional informal armed tribal militias that deal with specific problems, to force the militants out of their areas. 'The tribesmen have risen against the militants. It could be the turning point in our fight against militancy,' said Owais Ghani, the governor of the North-West Frontier Province.

Few doubt the eventual winner of the battle of Bajaur. Even senior militants are already melting away. The Observer found one in a slum area in Karachi, 1,000 miles to the south, earlier this month. But the question is what happens next. The key, analysts and soldiers agree, will be the political follow-through.

'The solutions to this conflict will not be military alone. The military can open up space for the administration of justice, political activity and development, said Major-General Tariq Khan. 'If we don't go down that road we will be in a vacuum, but I am sure these efforts are in train.'

Others are suggesting major political reform to end the tribal areas' special status and consequent isolation. A £500m development plan financed by the US has been launched. Britain has similar, smaller-scale projects. Yet with Pakistan's plunging economy and political instability, it is doubtful that the politicians and bureaucrats can - or want to - fill the vacuum.

Interviewed in Peshawar, captured militants predictably denied fighting in Bajaur. Instead most said their target was 'only' the 'Western occupiers' in Afghanistan, believing that such statements, made in front of Pakistani officers, would be appreciated by their audience.

One, however, was unashamed about his actions against his own government. The oldest of his fellow prisoners and alleged to be senior commander in Bajaur, the 45-year-old, a relatively wealthy man, said: 'If I am released, I will go straight back to what I was doing. Jihad is the only true path.'
The Khyber Pass: The Crossroads of Battle

At the foot of the Khyber Pass, only a hundred yards from where Pakistani dust becomes Afghan dust, is the busy frontier post of Torkham.

There, amid a chaos of overladen trucks, ragged children, tradesmen and fretful travellers, a blue painted stone lists the invaders who have crossed and recrossed this strategic staging post in the Hindu Kush.

From Alexander the Great's infantry to Mughal horsemen to British redcoats on punitive expeditions into Afghanistan to Winston Churchill to the Nato logistics trucks of today, few armies in the region have not fought, bribed or threatened their way through the massive cliffs and hairpins of the Khyber.

Even though the Soviets never penetrated Pakistan, the anti-tank ditches dug to stop them trying still lie beside the road adjacent to the badges of British regiments that are painted on the black rocks.

Last week, as Pakistani armed forces continued their battle with Taliban militants in Bajaur to the north where there is another crucial but much less famous crossing, there came a reminder that the Khyber remains as lawless as ever when trucks ferrying supplies to western forces in Afghanistan were hijacked by militants who later posed for photographs in front of the Humvee military vehicles before being chased off by attack helicopters.

But the Khyber is also a historic trade route too, for licit and illicit goods. Once it was caravans of spices, textiles, tea or looted wealth travelling between the plains of India and Persia or Europe. Later, camel trains brought the melons, pomegranates, horses and fat-tailed goats of Afghanistan.

In the 1990s convoys of local men would carry fridges and freezers across to Afghanistan only to bring them straight back, a customs dodge taking advantage of local trade agreements. But soldier, smuggler or honest merchant, no one has ever crossed the Khyber without the assent of the locals or without a fight.

For centuries, traders crossing the Khyber Pass have been routinely
'taxed' by local tribes, which have earned their living by providing 'safe conduct' to travellers. And the Pashtun clans living around the pass have always fiercely resisted any challenges to their autonomy.