There’s something a bit fishy about all this. I can’t quite put my finger on it though.
There’s 400 of these hardened well-armed foreign extremists living in several villages along the border and Pakistan didn’t know they were there?
Hmm…
They are surrounded by American troops over on the Afghan side of the border and Pakistani troops on the Pakistan side of the border. I’m wondering whether the US troops have been working their way along the border and it was they who found the terrorists not the Pakistan army.
Once the US troops found the terrorists they asked/ordered President Musharraf to help out. Musharraf was then left with no option but to go along with it. Since he’s now got to go along with it he’s decided he might as well make the best of it and send in thousands of troops. Make it look like a Pakistan victory against the terrorists. But in reality they knew they were there all along.
There seem to be so many of these guys there and they appear to have been there for some time. I’m wondering whether they’ve been there since right after the Afghanistan war. This is where they all went.
As to whether there’s some al Q bigwig there, it seems certainly possible given how well defended the area is. If this bigwig manages to escape from this situation, I for one will be wondering whether he wasn’t aided in his escape by Pakistani intelligence.
Hmm. Fishy, fishy, fish. The only remaining question for me is the size of the fish. Are we dealing with a sardine or are we dealing with a whale? Whales are mammals rather than fish though, aren’t they? So if we’re dealing with a whale then things could be even worse.
Debkafile is claiming that it’s a Pashtun tribal chieftan the Pakistanis have cornered. While a Pakistani military spokesman, speaking to Dawn reporters, says that no one has seen Zawahiri in the border area.
All we know is that there’s a big fight on. The rest is speculation.
Big article about this on the front page of today’s (Saturday’s) Hindustan Times. Short answer seems to be that the Pakistani gov’t. does not have very secure control over the Pak/Afgh. border region, that a large proportion of the residents support the jehadis and think that the gov’t. has no business messing with them, and that at least hundreds of the residents (additionally incensed by the threat of fines for not handing over al-Qaeda members) are now in arms against the gov’t. troops.
The HT describes this as having reached the scale of a “minor war”, including combats with armed tribals in control of a fortress (those border fortresses may be medieval but they’re strategically very well placed for defense and still quite sturdy).
My personal, non-expert evaluation of this: No fish, just a hornets’ nest. I.e., Musharraf and the Pak. government do not really want bin Laden or al-Qaeda to escape capture and go on making more trouble, and they haven’t been parties to any conspiracy to help the outlaws elude the search. However, they know perfectly well that the border region is a volatile mess with lots of well-armed, inaccessible, fairly hostile supporters of the outlaws, and I bet they were hoping that the al-Qs would eventually be smoked out and picked off without the need to put severe military pressure on the region. I don’t think anybody’s too sure what will happen now, but everybody’s hoping it won’t disrupt the current Indo-Pak cricket match.
By Rodney Dalton, New York correspondent and Agencies
March 20, 2004 (The Australian) – A BULLETPROOF LandCruiser at high speed bursting out of a tribal compound in Pakistan’s South Waziristan region was just the latest infuriating setback in the US’s quest to bring down the top of the al-Qa’ida tree.
The car, followed by two armoured vehicles and a phalanx of heavily armed militants able to wipe out dozens of crack troops sent to blast the terrorists from their nest, is believed to have contained Ayman al-Zawahiri, right-hand man to Osama bin Laden.
After mounting speculation that US and Pakistani forces ranged on either side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border were about to pounce on al-Qa’ida’s key planner, a senior Taliban spokesman yesterday made the claim Washington least wanted to hear - that both Zawahiri and bin Laden were safe in Afghanistan.
It’s become less heirarchical in the last couple of years, it seems. Largely because many of the leaders are stuck in Afghanistan or Pakistan and are keeping a low profile. But the media has never shied away from calling certain people “Al Qaeda lietenants” and such. In fact, CNN’s top story uses that exact phrase in a sub-head. Whether they have official positions or anything, al-Zawahiri is always referred to as bin Laden’s top adviser and he’s given a lot of the credit for planning September 11th.
informationclearinghousenet? talkinghousememo? These are cites? I’ll believe it when a reputable news source reports it. What is “The Australian”? Is that reputable? The other links are obvious garbage, but this theaustralian link seems kind of silly too. Is it possible for the guy to escape in what amounts to a mini-van? Was he watching a dvd on the way out? heh.
I find it hard to believe that if in fact this murderer, who has the entire pakistani and american military after his ass, could possibly drive out in a minivan. You have to figure planes, drones, and billions of dollars in machinery are circleling overhead.
If this could possibly be true, bush should be impeached tomorrow, and mushareff should be taken out in whatever manner the pakistanis feel is appropriate. I’m not buying this bullshit.
I do not think the Pakistani Army wants to see al-Qa‘idah to escape. The professional soldiers are probably loyal to their commander in chief.
But the ISI is another matter altogether. The ISI is the nefarious outfit that set up the Taliban, that manipulates fundamentalist mujahidin to destabilize its neighbors, that has infiltrated the Pakistani government for its own purposes and destabilized their own country. The ISI has for years been deeply intertwined with the most violent religious extremists. Not that I suspect the ISI spooks of being paragons of religious piety; I think they see religion as the easiest way to manipulate power for their own ends. Their purpose in sending the Taliban to take over Afghanistan was to have a cooperative neighbor on their border instead of a geopolitical rival. The historical background of Pakistan-Afghan relations goes back to the 1950s when Afghanistan’s government agitated for separatism of the Pashtun areas of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. That was the basis for Afghanistan’s historical closeness to both the Soviet Union and India, making Pakistan feel surrounded by hostile neighbors on both sides. The ISI used the Taliban to neutralize that old issue and settle some old grudges. Islamic government was just a pretext. The main use of the Taliban was to manipulate foreign relations to Pakistan’s advantage.
Any undermining of the campaign against al-Qa‘idah in Pakistan is going to be coordinated by ISI spooks, who have no loyalty to any administration, but feel they are answerable to no one. The ISI has probably been collaborating with al-Qa‘idah secretly as they have been collaborating with al-Qa‘idah’s Taliban and jihadist allies.
