SjaakSpier
01-04-04, 12:06
Al Qaeda Leaders Proving Elusive in Army Sweep
Source: Reuters
ISLAMABAD: From Osama Bin Laden and his right-hand man to Al Qaeda spies of varying seniority, the top scalps in the hunt for terror suspects on wild Afghan border are eluding thousands of troops sweeping the area.
In the latest setback, after trumpeting the death of “Al Qaeda’s intelligence chief” in a bloody siege, the government rowed back a day later on Tuesday and clarified that the slain man was a lower-ranking Al Qaeda operative.
“He is not the Al Qaeda intelligence chief but he was the local intelligence boss,” said military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan, referring to a man the authorities identified a day earlier as a leading Al Qaeda spy named “Abdullah”.
Thousands of soldiers are scouring perilous mountain ranges along a porous 2,450-km frontier with eastern Afghanistan for hundreds of armed Al Qaeda and other fighters believed to include Arabs, Afghans, Uzbeks and Chechens. But after a 12-day siege of a mud fort sheltering 400 to 500 Al-Qaeda fighters and their tribal allies ended on Sunday, no major Al Qaeda leaders emerged among 63 militants killed and 167 captured, despite speculation that bigger prizes were lurking.
Pakistan maintains that Bin Laden and other high-ranking Al Qaeda are not on Pakistani soil and that 50,000 troops deployed along its Afghan frontier are there to flush out militants regardless of their seniority.
Bin Laden’s whereabouts or even if he is actually alive remain a mystery. A video purporting to be of the Al Qaeda leader surfaced at Al Jazeera television on the anniversary last year of the September 11 attacks, but its authenticity was hotly debated.
Local journalists say Al Qaeda fighters slipped through the net several times last year because local people warned them the army was coming.
Heavy fighting at the start of the current raids suggested tribesmen were shielding a “high-value target”, may be Bin Laden’s deputy Ayman al-Zawahri.
But the army later dismissed presence of Zawahri as “conjecture” and said an Uzbek militant leader might be among the fighters.
That appeared correct. The army said a wounded Uzbek Al Qaeda leader, Tahir Yuldashev, was on the run, but he too escaped.
High expectations: The capture or death of Yuldashev or al-Zawahri, an Egyptian doctor with a $25 million price on his head, would be a coup for US President George W Bush in his campaign to keep allies onside in the war on terror after the Madrid train bombings.
But expectations surrounding the campaign may be too high, especially in Washington, said Samina Ahmed, Pakistan director of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
“It hasn’t helped that the US wanted something spectacular and the Pakistanis promised to deliver,” she said.
“If the operation had been what it should have been, which is the collection, the collation and the testing of intelligence first before it was launched, then the end result might not have been as disappointing as it seems,” she added.
The high death toll, 63 Islamic militants, 46 Pakistani troops and more than a dozen civilians, has fuelled the passions of Islamic hardliners who accuse President Pervez Musharraf of bowing to Washington at the expense of Muslim lives.
As residents clamour for compensation for their demolished homes in the rugged South Waziristan capital of Wana, scene of the bloodiest fighting, pressure is growing to produce a “high-value” fugitive that could justify the army’s siege.
Experts say finding that kind of target could prove tricky in a region where friendly tribes, a deep well of local loyalty and Bin Laden’s role as an ideological inspiration could combine to protect militant leaders in a lawless region known for defying state authority for centuries. —Reuters
Source: Reuters
ISLAMABAD: From Osama Bin Laden and his right-hand man to Al Qaeda spies of varying seniority, the top scalps in the hunt for terror suspects on wild Afghan border are eluding thousands of troops sweeping the area.
In the latest setback, after trumpeting the death of “Al Qaeda’s intelligence chief” in a bloody siege, the government rowed back a day later on Tuesday and clarified that the slain man was a lower-ranking Al Qaeda operative.
“He is not the Al Qaeda intelligence chief but he was the local intelligence boss,” said military spokesman Major-General Shaukat Sultan, referring to a man the authorities identified a day earlier as a leading Al Qaeda spy named “Abdullah”.
Thousands of soldiers are scouring perilous mountain ranges along a porous 2,450-km frontier with eastern Afghanistan for hundreds of armed Al Qaeda and other fighters believed to include Arabs, Afghans, Uzbeks and Chechens. But after a 12-day siege of a mud fort sheltering 400 to 500 Al-Qaeda fighters and their tribal allies ended on Sunday, no major Al Qaeda leaders emerged among 63 militants killed and 167 captured, despite speculation that bigger prizes were lurking.
Pakistan maintains that Bin Laden and other high-ranking Al Qaeda are not on Pakistani soil and that 50,000 troops deployed along its Afghan frontier are there to flush out militants regardless of their seniority.
Bin Laden’s whereabouts or even if he is actually alive remain a mystery. A video purporting to be of the Al Qaeda leader surfaced at Al Jazeera television on the anniversary last year of the September 11 attacks, but its authenticity was hotly debated.
Local journalists say Al Qaeda fighters slipped through the net several times last year because local people warned them the army was coming.
Heavy fighting at the start of the current raids suggested tribesmen were shielding a “high-value target”, may be Bin Laden’s deputy Ayman al-Zawahri.
But the army later dismissed presence of Zawahri as “conjecture” and said an Uzbek militant leader might be among the fighters.
That appeared correct. The army said a wounded Uzbek Al Qaeda leader, Tahir Yuldashev, was on the run, but he too escaped.
High expectations: The capture or death of Yuldashev or al-Zawahri, an Egyptian doctor with a $25 million price on his head, would be a coup for US President George W Bush in his campaign to keep allies onside in the war on terror after the Madrid train bombings.
But expectations surrounding the campaign may be too high, especially in Washington, said Samina Ahmed, Pakistan director of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
“It hasn’t helped that the US wanted something spectacular and the Pakistanis promised to deliver,” she said.
“If the operation had been what it should have been, which is the collection, the collation and the testing of intelligence first before it was launched, then the end result might not have been as disappointing as it seems,” she added.
The high death toll, 63 Islamic militants, 46 Pakistani troops and more than a dozen civilians, has fuelled the passions of Islamic hardliners who accuse President Pervez Musharraf of bowing to Washington at the expense of Muslim lives.
As residents clamour for compensation for their demolished homes in the rugged South Waziristan capital of Wana, scene of the bloodiest fighting, pressure is growing to produce a “high-value” fugitive that could justify the army’s siege.
Experts say finding that kind of target could prove tricky in a region where friendly tribes, a deep well of local loyalty and Bin Laden’s role as an ideological inspiration could combine to protect militant leaders in a lawless region known for defying state authority for centuries. —Reuters