Qaeda Network Expands Base in Pakistan
Qaeda Network Expands Base in Pakistan
who's watching the nukes ?
By CARLOTTA GALL
Published: December 30, 2007..NY TIMES
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.
In previous years Pakistani militants directed their energies against American and NATO forces 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 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.
The expansion of Pakistan?s own militants and their increasing links with Al Qaeda is a shift deeply troubling to the United States, which has been trying to help stabilize this volatile nuclear-armed country on the front line of the Bush administration?s fight against global terrorism.
It is also one that Pakistan?s own government has been loath to admit, but which Ms. Bhutto had begun to acknowledge publicly in her many warnings that the greatest threat to her country lay in religious extremism and terrorism.
Since Ms. Bhutto?s death rioting has left at least 38 people dead and cost millions of dollars of damage to businesses, vehicles and government buildings. The local terrorist network that has raised new concern for Pakistan includes men like Baitullah Mehsud, the tribal militant named by the government as the mastermind behind the attack, and who now claims to have hundreds of suicide bombers ready to attack government and military targets.
On Saturday, through a spokesman, Mr. Mehsud denied he was responsible and dismissed the allegations as government propaganda. ?Baitullah Mehsud is not involved in the killing of Benazir Bhutto,? the spokesman, Maulana Mohammed Umer, said in a phone call to The Associated Press from the tribal region of South Waziristan. ?The fact is that we are only against America, and we don?t consider political leaders of Pakistan our enemy.?
One of Pakistan?s leading newspapers, The Daily Times, noted Saturday that such claims and denials are 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 by Pakistanis.
But Al Qaeda in Pakistan now comprises not just tribesmen from the border regions but also Punjabis and Urdu speakers and members of banned Pakistani sectarian groups 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.
Since 2001, when Qaeda and Taliban forces fled the American intervention in Afghanistan and took refuge in Pakistan?s tribal area, the Pakistani militants have steadily grown in strength and boldness.
The tribal groups on the border have a long history of conflict with Pakistan?s central government, but today they have been bolstered and influenced by the foreigners among them. These include a small number of hard-core Arabs, including Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda?s second in command, as well as a larger number of Uzbeks, Tartars and Tajiks, Pakistani security officials familiar with the region said.
The foreigners have brought an influx of money and fighting and explosives expertise, as well as ideology that includes religious proponents of such tactics as suicide bombing and beheading, which Afghans and Pakistanis have never used before, the security officials said. More and more these local tribes and foreign networks have overlapping operations and agendas.
?We have irrefutable evidence that Al Qaeda, its networks, and cohorts are trying to destabilize Pakistan which is in the forefront of the war against terrorism,? said Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, the director of the National Crisis Management Cell, and main spokesman for the Interior Ministry.
?The country is facing the gravest challenge from these terrorists and extremist elements,? he said. ?They are systematically targeting our state institutions in order to destabilize the country.?
He said Mr. Mehsud 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.?
Mr. Mehsud in fact is just one commander in that terrorist network, running one of an estimated five groups training and dispatching suicide bombers from Pakistan?s 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, a group originally formed to wage an insurgency in Kashmir but now is fighting the government.
Mr. Zafar escaped capture in Karachi and is now based in South Waziristan, where he runs training courses teaching insurgents how to rig roadside explosions and vests for suicide bombings, one former security official said.
But it is Mr. Mehsud who has emerged this year as the most visible proponent of Al Qaeda?s ambitions, security officials said. Barely two years ago Mr. Mehsud was just an ordinary Pashtun tribesman who did not register on the radar screen of the intelligence services or government officials.
Mr. Mehsud, who is believed to be 32 years old, is a veteran of Afghanistan where he trained and fought with the Taliban against the main anti-Taliban force, the Northern Alliance, in the 1990s, 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 Guant?namo Bay, Cuba. Abdullah Mehsud was later released and took up the fight against American forces in Afghanistan from his home base in South Waziristan.
Both men are from the Mehsud tribe of South Waziristan, a large warrior Pashtun tribe that is renowned for never being quelled by the British forces during years of fighting in the frontier in the last century.
Abdullah Mehsud was killed in July when Pakistan forces surrounded him in a house in Zhob, a district south of the tribal areas in the province of Baluchistan. Since then, Baitullah Mehsud has risen in importance.
He is believed to be responsible for some of the most spectacular and damaging attacks inside Pakistan in recent months, including larger and larger suicide attacks against sensitive army and intelligence targets as well as high-level politicians and leaders such as Ms. Bhutto. He has also been identified by officials in Afghanistan as one of the main sources of suicide bombers crossing the border to make attacks there.
After the bloody siege between armed militants and government forces at the Red Mosque in the capital, Islamabad, in July, the militant groups led by Mr. Mehsud have staged increasingly serious attacks in retaliation.
A suicide bomber set off his explosives in the mess hall of the Special Services Group, killing at least 15 of the American-trained commandos in September. Two other bombers attacked buses of personnel from the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan?s foremost intelligence agency.
Other suicide bombers attacked the army general headquarters and a bus full of children of air force personnel. There were two attacks on the former Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, who has repeatedly advocated a tough line against the militants, and then two attacks on Ms. Bhutto. Both politicians had shown a readiness to work with Afghanistan?s president, Hamid Karzai, in fighting militancy, a stance that clearly riled militants who support the Taliban.
But Mr. Mehsud?s master strike came at the end of July when he captured nearly 300 soldiers who were escorting a supply convoy through the Mehsud tribal lands in Waziristan. He quickly beheaded three soldiers and demanded that the government withdraw from his area, cease operations against militants and release some of his tribesmen who had been captured, including some convicted bombers.
It took the government two months of negotiations through tribal elders to win the release of the soldiers, and only on Nov. 3 did it secure the release of its men. As part of the deal the government handed over 25 of Mr. Mehsud?s men, among them some convicted terrorists, on the same day that President Musharraf imposed emergency rule on the premise that he needed the extra powers to move against terrorists.
Since then the government appears to have done little to move against Mr. Mehsud. He now heads Tehrik-i-Taliban, a newly formed coalition of Islamic militants committed to waging holy war against the Pakistani government, which it sees as an ally of the United States in its war on terror. The government has outlawed the group but not moved against it. The army has concentrated in recent weeks on clearing militants from the Swat valley, a region some distance from the tribal areas on the border.
One reason the government appears wary of going after him is the fear of the retaliatory attacks he can employ. The army has concentrated on clearing militants from Swat, a famous tourist spot where militants have taken control in recent months.
Pakistani officials who have worked in the tribal areas say that it is still possible to contain the threat of someone like Mr. Mehsud through tribal pressure, if he can be separated from the foreign fighters. One official familiar with the region described how a militant religious leader, Maulavi Noor Muhammad, was dealt with in the 1970s.
He was caught and imprisoned for 10 years, and the entire bazaar of Wana, the district capital of South Waziristan, was razed as collective punishment to the tribe, a measure instituted by the British in colonial times. The local scouts, a military force raised from the tribes, scoured the mountains to fight his supporters, and the movement was defeated.
?The only problem is these foreigners,? the official said. ?You remove these foreigners and the rest is no problem.?
Yet to remove the foreigners, namely a small number of Arab leaders, who are well protected and well hidden, from among the tribesmen is a task that Pakistan so far has failed to do and according to some may not be capable of. ?That can only be done with an operation,? the official admitted.
