Muslim terrorism - PAKI TALIBAN WARLORD ARISES AS TERRORIST LEADER

Facts about terrorist Islam and Muslims:

http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate

Pakistani Taliban warlord arises as terrorist leader

By Saeed Shah and Tim Johnson

Washington Bureau

McCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Islamabad, Pakistan - The shadowy new terrorist leader

who's being blamed for the assassination of former

Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto embodies a growing

threat to the U.S.-backed Pakistani government, to

America's supply line to Afghanistan and to the Bush

administration's hopes for tracking down Osama bin Laden

and defeating al Qaida.

A few months ago, few Pakistanis and even fewer Americans

had heard of Baitullah Mehsud, and there are no pictures of

the face of the Pashtun-speaking tribal chief from the

rugged border area with Afghanistan. But in December, he

was chosen to lead the Taliban Movement of Pakistan, a

nascent Islamist insurgent coalition on Pakistan's

northwestern frontier that preaches a radical form of Islam

and opposes nuclear-armed Pakistan's secular regime.

According to Pakistani authorities, Mehsud is behind the

murderous bomb attacks that have shaken the country in the

last year. They also accuse him of ordering the Dec. 27

killing of Bhutto, a charge that the CIA has backed up.

Mehsud has denied any role.

So many accusations have been hung around Mehsud's neck

that some observers question whether he can be so powerful.

Others say his brutal rise is only beginning.

Mehsud operates from South Waziristan, within a wild

mountainous region bordering Afghanistan that's known as

the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. He reportedly

commands at least 5,000 armed followers -- maybe many more --

and models himself on Mullah Omar, the fugitive leader of

the Afghan Taliban, with whom he acknowledges spiritual

links.

Cunning but not well-educated, Mehsud orchestrated the

killings of more than 100 maliks -- traditional tribal

leaders -- in his area, many of whom wanted to talk peace

with Pakistani authorities. Late last year, he humiliated

Pakistan's army by kidnapping 250 soldiers, holding them

for weeks and letting them go only in exchange for

militants held in Pakistani jails.

In his first television interview, given last week to al

Jazeera, Mehsud said his armed militants sought to drive

the Pakistani army out of the tribal areas. He acknowledged

his links to al Qaida and voiced ambitions beyond

Pakistan's borders. Al Jazeera didn't show his face.

"We pray to God to give us the ability to destroy the White

House, New York and London," he told the network. "Very

soon, we will be witnessing jihad's miracles." He called

for a "defensive jihad," asking Muslims from around the

world to support his fight.

The apparent success of Mehsud and his allies in Pakistan's

tribal badlands has led the Pentagon and the CIA to lobby

to be allowed to intervene.

For the last week, Pakistani troops backed by artillery and

helicopter gunships have fought Mehsud's men in South

Waziristan. On Tuesday, a missile struck a reputed hideout

of Pakistani Taliban in a village in North Waziristan, in

Pakistan's tribal belt.

Some 40 Pakistani Taliban leaders, representing all parts

of the tribal areas and many settled regions in northwest

Pakistan, formed the movement known as Tehrik-e-Taliban

Pakistan in December, demonstrating the organization's

ambition and reach. The group's spokesman has claimed

responsibility for a number of attacks on security forces

in the area.

President Pervez Musharraf said recently that "most if not

all suicide bombings (in Pakistan ) can be traced" to

Mehsud.

Some accounts say Mehsud is in his early 30s, but according

to retired Brig. Gen. Mahmood Shah he's well into his 40s,

which may make more sense given that he's supposed to have

cut his jihadi teeth battling the Soviets in Afghanistan in

the 1980s. Shah, formerly the top security official in the

tribal areas, negotiated a peace accord with Mehsud through

intermediaries in February 2005.

"He is a very devoted Taliban," Shah said. "He is really

motivated and not jumpy like some others. He's a very

clever, surefooted animal. And when you talk to him he's

very gentle, very respectful."

The flight of foreign Islamic radicals from Afghanistan --

under military pressure from U.S. and NATO troops -- into

Pakistan's tribal border areas is one element in Mehsud's

rise.

"He's kind of at the intersection of three groups of bad

guys. There's the Afghan Taliban, under Mullah Omar. You

also have the Pakistan Taliban. Then there are allied

fighters," said Christine Fair, a South Asia expert at the

RAND Corp., a nonprofit research center with offices in

Arlington, Va.

Mehsud has embraced several hundred Arab, Uzbek, Tajik and

Chechen militants who fled Afghanistan and who fight for

Taliban and al Qaida causes from South Waziristan.

"The Chechens and the Uzbeks, especially the Uzbeks, are

known to be involved in the day-to-day fighting," said Ijaz

Khan, a political scientist at the University of Peshawar.

How Mehsud's militants finance themselves is unclear.

Analysts say charities in the oil-rich Persian Gulf

countries send money and that other funds flow from

Afghanistan, where the heroin trade is booming. Mehsud told

al Jazeera that his group's leaders "don't know how some

money has come to us or who has paid it."

"He's been funded from Russia and from India to degrade the

Pakistani army," said Shah, the retired brigadier general.

"They are financing the Uzbeks, and the Uzbeks help" the

Pakistani Taliban.

Many Pakistanis don't consider Mehsud a menace. They're as

likely to blame the spate of bombings and Bhutto's

assassination on assailants with links to the intelligence

services under Musharraf as on religious extremists.

"It is very easy to put the blame on someone who is sitting

in a mountain retreat," said Rustam Shah Mehmand,

Pakistan's former ambassador to Afghanistan. "I don't think

Baitullah Mehsud has such long arms to be committing such

brazen acts of violence."

Hassan Abbas, the author of the book " Pakistan's Drift

Into Extremism" and a research fellow at Harvard

University, said there were perhaps a dozen militant groups

in Pakistan that were capable of killing Bhutto, including

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Jaish-e-Mohammad.

Kamran Bokhari, the head of Middle East research at

Strategic Forecasting, a private intelligence firm based in

Austin, Texas, pointed out that unlike the very loose

organizational structure that al Qaida favors, Tehrik-e-

Taliban Pakistan is highly centralized.

"From an operational point of view, that's deadly," Bokhari

said.

If Mehsud is the rising terrorist mastermind that

authorities affirm, he's demonstrated skill at reaching

across the nation with attacks.

"He's shown his ability to strike outside of the tribal

areas with these suicide bombers," said Rahimullah

Yusufzai, the editor in Peshawar, which is near the tribal

areas, for the national daily newspaper The News and a

recognized expert on the Taliban. "He has sent suicide

bombers after every military strike against him."

After Bhutto's assassination, authorities produced an audio

recording of a lengthy mobile-phone conversation said to be

between Mehsud and a cleric, during which Mehsud supposedly

expressed congratulations over the killing of Bhutto,

although her name is never mentioned.

"The credibility of that cassette is very much in doubt,"

said retired Gen. Asad Durrani, a former head of Pakistan's

Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. "Groups that can

carry out such actions are wise enough not to claim credit

on the telephone. The moment you start speaking, you can be

targeted."

- - -

(Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent.)

More at:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20080130/wl_mcclatchy/2832129_1&printer=1;_ylt=AiSgj4qLb9qWr92k4JtpR7BBXYh4

Jai Maharaj

http://tinyurl.com/24fq83

http://www.mantra.com/jai

http://www.mantra.com/jyotish

Om Shanti

Hindu Holocaust Museum

http://www.mantra.com/holocaust

Hindu life, principles, spirituality and philosophy

http://www.hindu.org

http://www.hindunet.org

The truth about Islam and Muslims

http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate

DISCLAIMER AND CONDITIONS

o Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the educational

purposes of research and open discussion. The contents of this post may not

have been authored by, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the

poster. The contents are protected by copyright law and the exemption for

fair use of copyrighted works.

o If you send private e-mail to me, it will likely not be read,

considered or answered if it does not contain your full legal name, current

e-mail and postal addresses, and live-voice telephone number.

o Posted for information and discussion. Views expressed by others are

not necessarily those of the poster who may or may not have read the article.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This article may contain copyrighted material the use of

which may or may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright

owner. This material is being made available in efforts to advance the

understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic,

democratic, scientific, social, and cultural, etc., issues. It is believed

that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as

provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title

17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without

profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included

information for research, comment, discussion and educational purposes by

subscribing to USENET newsgroups or visiting web sites. For more information

go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

If you wish to use copyrighted material from this article for purposes of

your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the

copyright owner.