D
Dr. Jai Maharaj
Guest
Facts about terrorist Islam and Muslims:
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
Qaeda Network Expands Base in Pakistan
Islamabad, Pakistan - The Qaeda network accused by
Pakistan's government of killing the opposition leader
Benazir Bhutto is increasingly made up not of foreign
fighters but of homegrown Pakistani militants bent on
destabilizing the country, analysts and security officials
here say.
Benazir Bhutto, 54, Who Weathered Pakistan's Political
Storm for 3 Decades, Dies (December 28, 2007) Times Topics:
Benazir Bhutto | Pakistan In previous years Pakistani
militants directed their energies against American and NATO
forces across the border in Afghanistan and avoided clashes
with the Pakistani Army.
But this year they have very clearly expanded their ranks
and turned to a direct confrontation with the Pakistani
security forces while also aiming at political figures like
Ms. Bhutto, the former prime minister who died when a
suicide bomb exploded as she left a political rally
Thursday.
According to American officials in Washington, an already
steady stream of threat reports spiked in recent months.
Many of concerned possible plots to kill prominent
Pakistani leaders, including Ms. Bhutto, President Pervez
Musharraf and Nawaz Sharif, another opposition leader.
"Al Qaeda right now seems to have turned its face toward
Pakistan and attacks on the Pakistani government and
Pakistani people," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told
reporters in Washington on Dec. 21.
The expansion of Pakistan's own militants and their
fortified links with Al Qaeda presents deeply troubling
developments for the Bush administration and its efforts to
stabilize this volatile nuclear-armed country.
It is also one that many in Pakistan have been loath to
admit, but which Ms. Bhutto had begun to acknowledge in her
many public statements that the greatest threat to her
country lay in religious extremism and terrorism.
Those warnings have now been borne out with her death and
in the turmoil that has followed it and shaken Pakistan's
political fault lines. Rioting over the last two days has
left at least 38 people dead and 53 injured, and cost
millions of dollars of damage to businesses, vehicles and
government buildings, according an Interior Ministry
spokesman. Protesters have accused the government of
failing to protect Ms. Bhutto, or even conspiring to kill
her.
On Saturday, Mr. Sharif, now the country's most prominent
opposition figure, ventured to the political stronghold of
his assassinated rival to lay a wreath on her grave, but
also to make common cause against President Musharraf and
the Bush administration's support of him.
The government has tried to deflect that anger, blaming
militants linked to Al Qaeda, specifically Baitullah
Mehsud, as having masterminded the attack. But on Saturday,
through a spokesman, Mr. Mehsud denied he was responsible
and dismissed the allegations, adding fuel to the notion of
a government conspiracy.
"Neither Baitullah Mehsud nor any of his associates were
involved in the assassination of Benazir, because raising
your hand against women is against our tribal values and
customs," the spokesman, Maulavi Omar, said in a telephone
call from the tribal region of South Waziristan. "Only
those people who stood to gain politically are involved in
Benazir's murder," he said.
One of Pakistan's leading newspapers, The Daily Times,
noted Saturday that such denials were a common tactic used
to obscure the origins of the militants' attacks, and in
particular to extend the myth that the bombings are the
work of foreign elements, rather than of Pakistanis.
Al Qaeda in Pakistan now comprises not just foreigners or
even tribesmen from border regions, but also Pakistan's own
Punjabis and Urdu speakers and members of banned sectarian
and Sunni extremists groups, Najam Sethi, editor of The
Daily Times, wrote in a front-page analysis. "Al Qaeda is
now as much a Pakistani phenomenon as it is an Arab or
foreign element," he wrote.
The American officials said all credible threat information
in recent weeks was passed to Pakistani authorities, mainly
through the United States Embassy in Islamabad. But the
officials said they were not aware of any specific reports
of an attempt on Ms. Bhutto's life in Rawalpindi.
A senior American intelligence official said it was clear
from his reading of recent threat reports that "the
political process was not going to go untouched," adding
that militants almost surely would go to any length "to
create political disarray."
And while Ms. Bhutto had perhaps the longest list of
enemies among Pakistan's most prominent politicians, the
official said, "It almost didn't matter which one was
attacked -- Musharraf, Bhutto or Sharif. The militants were
looking for multiple target sets, whether in the capital
area, which would carry more weight, or in Karachi or
Peshawar."
In the face of this danger, American lawmakers pressed for
tighter government security around Ms. Bhutto. Senator
Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Delaware Democrat who heads the
Foreign Relations Committee and who is running for
president, released a letter last week that he and two
Senate colleagues had written to Mr. Musharraf at Ms.
Bhutto's request, urging him to increase her security.
The letter, written five days after the Oct. 19 bombing
attempt on Ms. Bhutto's life, urged Mr. Musharraf to
provide her "the full level of security support afforded to
any former prime minister," including "bomb-proof vehicles
and jamming equipment."
After Ms. Bhutto's death, Mr. Biden said in a statement,
"The failure to protect Ms. Bhutto raises a lot of hard
questions for the government and security services that
must be answered." But a Defense Department official said
Saturday, "I don't know how foolproof you can make any
security when people are willing to kill themselves."
The tribes on the border have a long history of fighting
invading armies. But since 2001, when Qaeda and Taliban
forces fled the American intervention in Afghanistan and
took refuge in Pakistan's tribal areas, the Pakistani
militants have steadily grown in strength and boldness.
Today they have been bolstered by the foreigners among
them. These include a smaller number of hard-core Arabs,
such as Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda's
second in command, as well as a larger number of Uzbeks,
Tartars and Tajiks who have influence them to take on new
agendas, Pakistani security officials familiar with the
region said.
The Arabs in particular have brought money and fighting and
explosives expertise, as well as ideology that includes
religious justifications of tactics like suicide bombings
and beheadings, which Afghans and Pakistanis had not used
before, they said.
More and more these local tribes and foreign networks have
overlapping operations and agendas.
"The country is facing the gravest challenge from these
terrorists and extremist elements," Brig. Javed Iqbal
Cheema, the director of the National Crisis Management Cell
and main spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said Friday
as he accused Al Qaeda of Ms. Bhutto's assassination. "They
are systematically targeting our state institutions in
order to destabilize the country."
Mr. Mehsud, he said, was of the "same brand of Al Qaeda and
Taliban terrorists," and was "behind most of the recent
terrorist attacks that have taken place in Pakistan."
Some security officials in the North-West Frontier Province
have warned, however, that it has become the norm for the
government to blame Mr. Mehsud for just about any attack,
without providing real evidence.
Mr. Mehsud is in fact one commander in a broader terrorist
network who runs just one of an estimated five groups that
train and dispatch suicide bombers from Pakistan's isolated
tribal areas, according to officials.
Another man known to be sending out suicide bombers is Qari
Zafar, a militant from southern Punjab who was connected to
the banned Sunni extremist group Sipa-e-Sahaba and then
Jaish-e-Muhammad.
Mr. Zafar escaped capture in Karachi and is now based in
South Waziristan, where he trains insurgents on how to rig
roadside bombs and vests for suicide bombings, a former
security official said.
But it is Mr. Mehsud who has emerged this year as the most
visible proponent of Al Qaeda's ambitions in Pakistan,
security officials said. He has claimed to have hundreds of
suicide bombers ready to attack government and military
targets.
Barely two years ago Mr. Mehsud, 32, was just a Pashtun
tribesman who did not register on the radar screen of the
intelligence services or government officials. He is a
veteran of the war in Afghanistan in the 1990s, when he
trained and fought with the Taliban, according to one
Pakistani intelligence official.
He became a follower of Abdullah Mehsud, the one-legged
commander who was captured when fighting with the Taliban
in 2001 in Afghanistan and detained by the United States at
its military base in Guant
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
Qaeda Network Expands Base in Pakistan
Islamabad, Pakistan - The Qaeda network accused by
Pakistan's government of killing the opposition leader
Benazir Bhutto is increasingly made up not of foreign
fighters but of homegrown Pakistani militants bent on
destabilizing the country, analysts and security officials
here say.
Benazir Bhutto, 54, Who Weathered Pakistan's Political
Storm for 3 Decades, Dies (December 28, 2007) Times Topics:
Benazir Bhutto | Pakistan In previous years Pakistani
militants directed their energies against American and NATO
forces across the border in Afghanistan and avoided clashes
with the Pakistani Army.
But this year they have very clearly expanded their ranks
and turned to a direct confrontation with the Pakistani
security forces while also aiming at political figures like
Ms. Bhutto, the former prime minister who died when a
suicide bomb exploded as she left a political rally
Thursday.
According to American officials in Washington, an already
steady stream of threat reports spiked in recent months.
Many of concerned possible plots to kill prominent
Pakistani leaders, including Ms. Bhutto, President Pervez
Musharraf and Nawaz Sharif, another opposition leader.
"Al Qaeda right now seems to have turned its face toward
Pakistan and attacks on the Pakistani government and
Pakistani people," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told
reporters in Washington on Dec. 21.
The expansion of Pakistan's own militants and their
fortified links with Al Qaeda presents deeply troubling
developments for the Bush administration and its efforts to
stabilize this volatile nuclear-armed country.
It is also one that many in Pakistan have been loath to
admit, but which Ms. Bhutto had begun to acknowledge in her
many public statements that the greatest threat to her
country lay in religious extremism and terrorism.
Those warnings have now been borne out with her death and
in the turmoil that has followed it and shaken Pakistan's
political fault lines. Rioting over the last two days has
left at least 38 people dead and 53 injured, and cost
millions of dollars of damage to businesses, vehicles and
government buildings, according an Interior Ministry
spokesman. Protesters have accused the government of
failing to protect Ms. Bhutto, or even conspiring to kill
her.
On Saturday, Mr. Sharif, now the country's most prominent
opposition figure, ventured to the political stronghold of
his assassinated rival to lay a wreath on her grave, but
also to make common cause against President Musharraf and
the Bush administration's support of him.
The government has tried to deflect that anger, blaming
militants linked to Al Qaeda, specifically Baitullah
Mehsud, as having masterminded the attack. But on Saturday,
through a spokesman, Mr. Mehsud denied he was responsible
and dismissed the allegations, adding fuel to the notion of
a government conspiracy.
"Neither Baitullah Mehsud nor any of his associates were
involved in the assassination of Benazir, because raising
your hand against women is against our tribal values and
customs," the spokesman, Maulavi Omar, said in a telephone
call from the tribal region of South Waziristan. "Only
those people who stood to gain politically are involved in
Benazir's murder," he said.
One of Pakistan's leading newspapers, The Daily Times,
noted Saturday that such denials were a common tactic used
to obscure the origins of the militants' attacks, and in
particular to extend the myth that the bombings are the
work of foreign elements, rather than of Pakistanis.
Al Qaeda in Pakistan now comprises not just foreigners or
even tribesmen from border regions, but also Pakistan's own
Punjabis and Urdu speakers and members of banned sectarian
and Sunni extremists groups, Najam Sethi, editor of The
Daily Times, wrote in a front-page analysis. "Al Qaeda is
now as much a Pakistani phenomenon as it is an Arab or
foreign element," he wrote.
The American officials said all credible threat information
in recent weeks was passed to Pakistani authorities, mainly
through the United States Embassy in Islamabad. But the
officials said they were not aware of any specific reports
of an attempt on Ms. Bhutto's life in Rawalpindi.
A senior American intelligence official said it was clear
from his reading of recent threat reports that "the
political process was not going to go untouched," adding
that militants almost surely would go to any length "to
create political disarray."
And while Ms. Bhutto had perhaps the longest list of
enemies among Pakistan's most prominent politicians, the
official said, "It almost didn't matter which one was
attacked -- Musharraf, Bhutto or Sharif. The militants were
looking for multiple target sets, whether in the capital
area, which would carry more weight, or in Karachi or
Peshawar."
In the face of this danger, American lawmakers pressed for
tighter government security around Ms. Bhutto. Senator
Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Delaware Democrat who heads the
Foreign Relations Committee and who is running for
president, released a letter last week that he and two
Senate colleagues had written to Mr. Musharraf at Ms.
Bhutto's request, urging him to increase her security.
The letter, written five days after the Oct. 19 bombing
attempt on Ms. Bhutto's life, urged Mr. Musharraf to
provide her "the full level of security support afforded to
any former prime minister," including "bomb-proof vehicles
and jamming equipment."
After Ms. Bhutto's death, Mr. Biden said in a statement,
"The failure to protect Ms. Bhutto raises a lot of hard
questions for the government and security services that
must be answered." But a Defense Department official said
Saturday, "I don't know how foolproof you can make any
security when people are willing to kill themselves."
The tribes on the border have a long history of fighting
invading armies. But since 2001, when Qaeda and Taliban
forces fled the American intervention in Afghanistan and
took refuge in Pakistan's tribal areas, the Pakistani
militants have steadily grown in strength and boldness.
Today they have been bolstered by the foreigners among
them. These include a smaller number of hard-core Arabs,
such as Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda's
second in command, as well as a larger number of Uzbeks,
Tartars and Tajiks who have influence them to take on new
agendas, Pakistani security officials familiar with the
region said.
The Arabs in particular have brought money and fighting and
explosives expertise, as well as ideology that includes
religious justifications of tactics like suicide bombings
and beheadings, which Afghans and Pakistanis had not used
before, they said.
More and more these local tribes and foreign networks have
overlapping operations and agendas.
"The country is facing the gravest challenge from these
terrorists and extremist elements," Brig. Javed Iqbal
Cheema, the director of the National Crisis Management Cell
and main spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said Friday
as he accused Al Qaeda of Ms. Bhutto's assassination. "They
are systematically targeting our state institutions in
order to destabilize the country."
Mr. Mehsud, he said, was of the "same brand of Al Qaeda and
Taliban terrorists," and was "behind most of the recent
terrorist attacks that have taken place in Pakistan."
Some security officials in the North-West Frontier Province
have warned, however, that it has become the norm for the
government to blame Mr. Mehsud for just about any attack,
without providing real evidence.
Mr. Mehsud is in fact one commander in a broader terrorist
network who runs just one of an estimated five groups that
train and dispatch suicide bombers from Pakistan's isolated
tribal areas, according to officials.
Another man known to be sending out suicide bombers is Qari
Zafar, a militant from southern Punjab who was connected to
the banned Sunni extremist group Sipa-e-Sahaba and then
Jaish-e-Muhammad.
Mr. Zafar escaped capture in Karachi and is now based in
South Waziristan, where he trains insurgents on how to rig
roadside bombs and vests for suicide bombings, a former
security official said.
But it is Mr. Mehsud who has emerged this year as the most
visible proponent of Al Qaeda's ambitions in Pakistan,
security officials said. He has claimed to have hundreds of
suicide bombers ready to attack government and military
targets.
Barely two years ago Mr. Mehsud, 32, was just a Pashtun
tribesman who did not register on the radar screen of the
intelligence services or government officials. He is a
veteran of the war in Afghanistan in the 1990s, when he
trained and fought with the Taliban, according to one
Pakistani intelligence official.
He became a follower of Abdullah Mehsud, the one-legged
commander who was captured when fighting with the Taliban
in 2001 in Afghanistan and detained by the United States at
its military base in Guant
