Did They Get Him ???
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<font size="5"><center>Al-Qaeda No. 2 wasn't on site
during U.S. attack, officials say</font size></center>
USA Today
Posted 1/14/2006 6:34 AM
Updated 1/14/2006 9:12 AM
DAMADOLA, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan on Saturday condemned a deadly airstrike in which the U.S. reportedly targeted al-Qaeda's second-in-command, as villagers whose homes were destroyed denied the militant was ever there and thousands of Pakistanis protested the attack.
The statement came after U.S. networks, citing unnamed American intelligence officials, reported that a CIA-operated Predator drone aircraft carried out the missile strike Friday and that it was aimed at Ayman al-Zawahri in the Bajur tribal region of northwestern Pakistan.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed did not directly blame the U.S. for the attack, which killed at least 17 people, but he said the government wanted "to assure the people we will not allow such incidents to reoccur."
Two Pakistani officials told The Associated Press on Saturday that the CIA had acted on incorrect information, and al-Zawahri was not in the village of Damadola when it came under attack. Al-Zawahri is ranked No. 2 in the al-Qaeda terror network, second only to Osama bin Laden.
"Their information was wrong, and our investigations conclude that they acted on a false information," said a senior intelligence official. His account was confirmed by a senior government official, who said al-Zawahri "was not there."
Meanwhile, sporadic protests broke out against the attack and hundreds of local tribesmen torched the office of the Associated Development Construction, a U.S.-funded aid group, in Khar, a small town near Bajur. The mob ransacked furniture and computers, but no injuries were reported, resident Haji Habibullah said.
An AP reporter who visited the scene in Damadola village about 12 hours after the airstrike saw three destroyed houses hundreds of yards apart. Villagers recounted hearing aircraft overhead moments before the attack. By their count at least 30 people died, including women and children.
There was no confirmation from either Islamabad or Washington on the reports that al-Zawahri had been targeted, but a Pakistani intelligence official said the CIA had told Pakistani agents that they had targeted al-Zawahri in the attack.
Villagers in Damadola denied hosting al-Zawahri or any other al-Qaeda or Taliban figure, saying all the dead were local people. On Saturday, more than 8,000 tribesmen staged a peaceful protest in a nearby town to condemn the airstrike, which one speaker described as "open terrorism."
Earlier, the second intelligence official told AP the remains of some bodies had "quickly been removed" from Damadola after the strike and DNA tests were being conducted, but would not say by whom. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media.
The official added that hours before the strike some unidentified guests had arrived at the home of one tribesman named Shah Zaman.
Zaman, whose home was destroyed, told AP he was a "law-abiding" laborer and had no ties to militants. He was not hurt but said three of his children were killed.
A local lawmaker who visited Damadola soon after the attack said no foreigners were among the dead. Sahibzada Haroon ur Rashid said all the bodies were identifiable and the victims were a family of jewelers.
The spokesman for President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, only said the explosions in the village were under investigation.
In Washington, Pentagon, State Department, National Security Council and intelligence officials all said they had no information on the reports concerning al-Zawahri.
In Afghanistan, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Mike Cody referred questions on the matter to the Pentagon. The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan referred questions to the Pakistan government.
Doctors told AP that at least 17 people died in the attack. But at one destroyed house, Sami Ullah, a 17-year-old student, said he alone lost 24 of his relatives. Five women were weeping nearby, cursing the attackers.
"My entire family was killed, and I don't know whom should I blame for it," Ullah said. "I only seek justice from God."
Zaman said he heard planes at around 2:40 a.m. and then eight explosions. Speaking as he dug through the rubble of his home, he said planes had been flying over the village for the last three or four days.
"I ran out and saw planes were dropping bombs," said Zaman, 40, who lost two sons and a daughter. "I saw my home being hit."
The attack was the latest in a series of strikes on the Pakistan side of the border with Afghanistan, unexplained by authorities but widely suspected to have targeted terror suspects or Islamic militants.
Pakistan lodged a protest Monday with the U.S. military in Afghanistan after a reported U.S. airstrike killed eight people in the North Waziristan tribal region last Saturday. Pakistan says it does not allow U.S. forces to cross the border in pursuit of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. The war on terror is opposed by many in this Islamic nation of 150 million people.
Al-Zawahri, who has a $25 million dollar U.S. bounty on his head, has appeared regularly over the Internet and in Arab media, encouraging Muslims to attack Americans and U.S. interests worldwide.
Like bin Laden, his whereabouts had been unknown since the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan began following the terror attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 people.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-01-14-al-qaeda-no-2_x.htm
during U.S. attack, officials say</font size></center>
USA Today
Posted 1/14/2006 6:34 AM
Updated 1/14/2006 9:12 AM
DAMADOLA, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan on Saturday condemned a deadly airstrike in which the U.S. reportedly targeted al-Qaeda's second-in-command, as villagers whose homes were destroyed denied the militant was ever there and thousands of Pakistanis protested the attack.
The statement came after U.S. networks, citing unnamed American intelligence officials, reported that a CIA-operated Predator drone aircraft carried out the missile strike Friday and that it was aimed at Ayman al-Zawahri in the Bajur tribal region of northwestern Pakistan.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed did not directly blame the U.S. for the attack, which killed at least 17 people, but he said the government wanted "to assure the people we will not allow such incidents to reoccur."
Two Pakistani officials told The Associated Press on Saturday that the CIA had acted on incorrect information, and al-Zawahri was not in the village of Damadola when it came under attack. Al-Zawahri is ranked No. 2 in the al-Qaeda terror network, second only to Osama bin Laden.
"Their information was wrong, and our investigations conclude that they acted on a false information," said a senior intelligence official. His account was confirmed by a senior government official, who said al-Zawahri "was not there."
Meanwhile, sporadic protests broke out against the attack and hundreds of local tribesmen torched the office of the Associated Development Construction, a U.S.-funded aid group, in Khar, a small town near Bajur. The mob ransacked furniture and computers, but no injuries were reported, resident Haji Habibullah said.
An AP reporter who visited the scene in Damadola village about 12 hours after the airstrike saw three destroyed houses hundreds of yards apart. Villagers recounted hearing aircraft overhead moments before the attack. By their count at least 30 people died, including women and children.
There was no confirmation from either Islamabad or Washington on the reports that al-Zawahri had been targeted, but a Pakistani intelligence official said the CIA had told Pakistani agents that they had targeted al-Zawahri in the attack.
Villagers in Damadola denied hosting al-Zawahri or any other al-Qaeda or Taliban figure, saying all the dead were local people. On Saturday, more than 8,000 tribesmen staged a peaceful protest in a nearby town to condemn the airstrike, which one speaker described as "open terrorism."
Earlier, the second intelligence official told AP the remains of some bodies had "quickly been removed" from Damadola after the strike and DNA tests were being conducted, but would not say by whom. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media.
The official added that hours before the strike some unidentified guests had arrived at the home of one tribesman named Shah Zaman.
Zaman, whose home was destroyed, told AP he was a "law-abiding" laborer and had no ties to militants. He was not hurt but said three of his children were killed.
A local lawmaker who visited Damadola soon after the attack said no foreigners were among the dead. Sahibzada Haroon ur Rashid said all the bodies were identifiable and the victims were a family of jewelers.
The spokesman for President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, only said the explosions in the village were under investigation.
In Washington, Pentagon, State Department, National Security Council and intelligence officials all said they had no information on the reports concerning al-Zawahri.
In Afghanistan, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Mike Cody referred questions on the matter to the Pentagon. The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan referred questions to the Pakistan government.
Doctors told AP that at least 17 people died in the attack. But at one destroyed house, Sami Ullah, a 17-year-old student, said he alone lost 24 of his relatives. Five women were weeping nearby, cursing the attackers.
"My entire family was killed, and I don't know whom should I blame for it," Ullah said. "I only seek justice from God."
Zaman said he heard planes at around 2:40 a.m. and then eight explosions. Speaking as he dug through the rubble of his home, he said planes had been flying over the village for the last three or four days.
"I ran out and saw planes were dropping bombs," said Zaman, 40, who lost two sons and a daughter. "I saw my home being hit."
The attack was the latest in a series of strikes on the Pakistan side of the border with Afghanistan, unexplained by authorities but widely suspected to have targeted terror suspects or Islamic militants.
Pakistan lodged a protest Monday with the U.S. military in Afghanistan after a reported U.S. airstrike killed eight people in the North Waziristan tribal region last Saturday. Pakistan says it does not allow U.S. forces to cross the border in pursuit of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. The war on terror is opposed by many in this Islamic nation of 150 million people.
Al-Zawahri, who has a $25 million dollar U.S. bounty on his head, has appeared regularly over the Internet and in Arab media, encouraging Muslims to attack Americans and U.S. interests worldwide.
Like bin Laden, his whereabouts had been unknown since the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan began following the terror attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 people.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-01-14-al-qaeda-no-2_x.htm
Terrorism is the unconventional use of violence for political gain. It is a strategy of using coordinated attacks that fall outside the laws of war commonly understood to represent the bounds of conventional warfare (see also unconventional warfare).
"Terrorist attacks" are usually characterized as "indiscriminate," "targeting of civilians," or executed "with disregard" for human life.
HAVE A NICE DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"Terrorist attacks" are usually characterized as "indiscriminate," "targeting of civilians," or executed "with disregard" for human life.
HAVE A NICE DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Assuming, arguendo, that your definitions are appropriate, do you have any FACTS (1) suggesting the use of unconventional force, (2) the use of violence for political gain, (3) that the actions taken in THIS CASE were outside the commonly understood laws of war representing conventional warfare, (4) and that the attack was the <u>indiscriminate</u> targeting of civilians ???dyhawk said:
What you said might turn out to be true, but at THIS TIME You must have <u> more information</u> than the rest of just reading news accounts of the incident, if so, please share.
QueEx
<font size="5"><center>Zawahri alive: Arabiya TV </font size>
<font size="4">citing Qaeda-linked source</font size></center>
Reuters
Sat Jan 14, 2006 12:23 PM ET
DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri is alive, Al Arabiya television reported on Saturday, quoting a source which it said has contact with al Qaeda.
"A source with contacts with al Qaeda reiterated to Arabiya that Zawahri is alive," the satellite television said.
"Reports of his death are wishful thinking," it quoted unnamed sources as saying. The station gave no further details.
The report came after U.S. sources said a U.S. air strike in Pakistan targeted Zawahri, but a senior Pakistani official said the al Qaeda leader was not there at the time.
The strike on Friday killed at least 18 people, including women and children, and three houses were destroyed in a village near the Afghan border, residents said.
CIA-operated unmanned drones were believed to have been used in the attack, U.S. sources said. A Pakistani intelligence official said four missiles had been fired.
Pakistan condemned the air strike and summoned the U.S. ambassador.
The United States has offered $25 million each for Egyptian Zawahri and top al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who have been on the run since U.S.-led forces toppled Afghanistan's Taliban government in 2001 after the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities.
They are believed to have been hiding along the border under the protection of Pashtun tribes.
http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsA...224_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-ZAWAHRI-ARABIYA.xml
<font size="4">citing Qaeda-linked source</font size></center>
Reuters
Sat Jan 14, 2006 12:23 PM ET
DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri is alive, Al Arabiya television reported on Saturday, quoting a source which it said has contact with al Qaeda.
"A source with contacts with al Qaeda reiterated to Arabiya that Zawahri is alive," the satellite television said.
"Reports of his death are wishful thinking," it quoted unnamed sources as saying. The station gave no further details.
The report came after U.S. sources said a U.S. air strike in Pakistan targeted Zawahri, but a senior Pakistani official said the al Qaeda leader was not there at the time.
The strike on Friday killed at least 18 people, including women and children, and three houses were destroyed in a village near the Afghan border, residents said.
CIA-operated unmanned drones were believed to have been used in the attack, U.S. sources said. A Pakistani intelligence official said four missiles had been fired.
Pakistan condemned the air strike and summoned the U.S. ambassador.
The United States has offered $25 million each for Egyptian Zawahri and top al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who have been on the run since U.S.-led forces toppled Afghanistan's Taliban government in 2001 after the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities.
They are believed to have been hiding along the border under the protection of Pashtun tribes.
http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsA...224_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-ZAWAHRI-ARABIYA.xml
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Irrational32
Guest
Zawahri alive: Arabiya TV
we will never die
we will never die
Web Exclusive | World
<font size="5"><center>How Would the U.S. Know if it Killed a Qaeda Chief?</font size>
<font size="4">Washington has DNA samples that have disproved
previous claims on the Zawarihi bounty </font size></center>
Time Magazine
By ELAINE SHANNON/WASHINGTON
Posted Saturday, Jan. 14, 2006
Veteran FBI agent Danny Coleman, who served for years as the bureau's ranking expert on Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri and the rest of the Qaeda inner circle, doesn't get too excited when he hears a report of Zawahiri's demise — such as the one that briefly grabbed headlines on Saturday before Pakistani officials shot it down.
"Three years ago, somebody gave me a skull that was supposed to be his," says Coleman, who recently retired. It was a nice try. "It had a prayer burn on the forehead" the ex-agent says. "Zawahiri has a very distinctive one on his forehead."
But with a $25 million reward at stake, Coleman says, "I like to have some proof." According to law enforcement and military sources, the Egyptian government has provided the U.S. with DNA from Zawahiri's brother, who is languishing in an Egyptian prison. That gives U.S. intelligence a scientific means to positively identify the fugitive Qaeda leader.
The tests, run at the FBI laboratory in Washington, were definitive, and negative. "It was just some poor guy somebody dug up," says Coleman.
In a part of the world where people can be killed for trinkets, the astronomical U.S. bounty on Zawahiri — plus whatever the CIA is offering from its discretionary slush fund — has no doubt inspired countless bounty-hunters and snitches peddling dubious information. It's too soon to say whether the tip that caused the U.S. to target a benighted village in northwest Pakistan was real or just another false lead. In fact, the identities of those who died in the strike may never be established to the satisfaction of the U.S., given the difficulties of obtaining unbiased witness accounts and the even more formidable obstacles to recovering tissue and other forensic evidence from the rubble.
Even if Zawahiri was to have been killed in the strike, Coleman believes his loss would not be a crippling blow to al-Qaeda. Zawahiri is certainly a radicalized, visceral killer, driven by "a deep down hatred" honed by his experiences in an Egyptian prison. Coleman believes the Egyptian contingent of al-Qaeda demonstrated a bloodlust unusual even among the committed jihadists. Many graduates of Qaeda camps had no qualms about carrying out bombings, but few matched the Egyptians' readiness to spill blood up close, through shootings and stabbings. "The Egyptians were always more doers than talkers," says Coleman. They were capable of extraordinary violence which the other people in al Qaeda weren't capable of, necessarily."
But for all Zawahiri's ruthlessness, his crankiness undermined his effectiveness as a leader of the organization — leadership in al-Qaeda, like any legitimate organization, requires people skills that seem to have eluded the Egyptian physician. "He couldn't lead his own family round the block," says Coleman. "He's a very disagreeable person. He's capable, he writes well, he's a pretty good speaker, but he's an incredibly disagreeable person. In terms of actually leading anybody he's not that good. He likes to fight with people, so it's hard for him to lead. "
Bin Laden is beloved by those in al Qaeda who know him and work with him. But while many in the movement may have a high regard for Zawahiri's education and intellectual skills, Coleman says, they just don't like the man.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1149326,00.html
<font size="5"><center>How Would the U.S. Know if it Killed a Qaeda Chief?</font size>
<font size="4">Washington has DNA samples that have disproved
previous claims on the Zawarihi bounty </font size></center>
Time Magazine
By ELAINE SHANNON/WASHINGTON
Posted Saturday, Jan. 14, 2006
Veteran FBI agent Danny Coleman, who served for years as the bureau's ranking expert on Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri and the rest of the Qaeda inner circle, doesn't get too excited when he hears a report of Zawahiri's demise — such as the one that briefly grabbed headlines on Saturday before Pakistani officials shot it down.
"Three years ago, somebody gave me a skull that was supposed to be his," says Coleman, who recently retired. It was a nice try. "It had a prayer burn on the forehead" the ex-agent says. "Zawahiri has a very distinctive one on his forehead."
But with a $25 million reward at stake, Coleman says, "I like to have some proof." According to law enforcement and military sources, the Egyptian government has provided the U.S. with DNA from Zawahiri's brother, who is languishing in an Egyptian prison. That gives U.S. intelligence a scientific means to positively identify the fugitive Qaeda leader.
The tests, run at the FBI laboratory in Washington, were definitive, and negative. "It was just some poor guy somebody dug up," says Coleman.
In a part of the world where people can be killed for trinkets, the astronomical U.S. bounty on Zawahiri — plus whatever the CIA is offering from its discretionary slush fund — has no doubt inspired countless bounty-hunters and snitches peddling dubious information. It's too soon to say whether the tip that caused the U.S. to target a benighted village in northwest Pakistan was real or just another false lead. In fact, the identities of those who died in the strike may never be established to the satisfaction of the U.S., given the difficulties of obtaining unbiased witness accounts and the even more formidable obstacles to recovering tissue and other forensic evidence from the rubble.
Even if Zawahiri was to have been killed in the strike, Coleman believes his loss would not be a crippling blow to al-Qaeda. Zawahiri is certainly a radicalized, visceral killer, driven by "a deep down hatred" honed by his experiences in an Egyptian prison. Coleman believes the Egyptian contingent of al-Qaeda demonstrated a bloodlust unusual even among the committed jihadists. Many graduates of Qaeda camps had no qualms about carrying out bombings, but few matched the Egyptians' readiness to spill blood up close, through shootings and stabbings. "The Egyptians were always more doers than talkers," says Coleman. They were capable of extraordinary violence which the other people in al Qaeda weren't capable of, necessarily."
But for all Zawahiri's ruthlessness, his crankiness undermined his effectiveness as a leader of the organization — leadership in al-Qaeda, like any legitimate organization, requires people skills that seem to have eluded the Egyptian physician. "He couldn't lead his own family round the block," says Coleman. "He's a very disagreeable person. He's capable, he writes well, he's a pretty good speaker, but he's an incredibly disagreeable person. In terms of actually leading anybody he's not that good. He likes to fight with people, so it's hard for him to lead. "
Bin Laden is beloved by those in al Qaeda who know him and work with him. But while many in the movement may have a high regard for Zawahiri's education and intellectual skills, Coleman says, they just don't like the man.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1149326,00.html
<font size="5"><center>U.S. Strike On Al Qaeda Top Deputy Said to Fail</font size>
<font size="4">Thousands Protest After Attack In Pakistan Leaves 17 Dead</font size></center>
Washington Post
By Griff Witte and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 15, 2006; Page A01
KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 14 -- Pakistani officials said Saturday that a U.S. missile strike intended to kill al Qaeda deputy Ayman Zawahiri had missed its target but had killed 17 people, including six women and six children.
Tens of thousands of Pakistanis staged an angry anti-American protest near the remote village of Damadola, about 120 miles northwest of Islamabad, where Friday's attack took place. According to witnesses, the demonstrators shouted, "Death to America!" and "Death to Musharraf!" -- referring to Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf -- and the offices of at least one U.S.-backed aid organization were ransacked and set ablaze.
In Washington, U.S. intelligence sources said it was too early to know whether the strike had killed Zawahiri, 54, an Egyptian physician who is al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's top aide. "The outcome of this doesn't seem decided," said a source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
U.S. officials defended the strike, saying it was the right course of action based on timely intelligence about Zawahiri's whereabouts early Friday. Zawahiri had been under surveillance by the CIA for two weeks, security sources said.
The CIA, which military and intelligence sources say carried out the attack with a type of unmanned aircraft called a Predator, declined to comment Saturday.
Local authorities denied that any foreigners had been present in the area.
"We can say with full authority that those who were killed were all innocent permanent residents of the village Damadola," said Sirajul Haq, senior minister of Pakistan's North-West Frontier province. "Any independent probe would confirm that no foreigner was in the vicinity of the neighborhood targeted by the U.S. missiles."
Two officials with Pakistan's military intelligence service confirmed the local leaders' assessment. The Pakistani government in Islamabad, however, produced a more muted response, saying it had formally protested the strike to the U.S. government but conceding there may have been people in the area whom the United States would have an interest in attacking.
The strike was the latest in a series aimed at al Qaeda fugitives believed to be hiding in the region along Pakistan's porous and largely lawless border with Afghanistan.
After al Qaeda carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, U.S. forces and Afghan militias toppled the Afghan Taliban movement, which had sheltered and supported bin Laden's organization. Bin Laden, Zawahiri and many other al Qaeda leaders are believed to have crossed the border and taken refuge in Pakistan's tribal regions, where they have eluded capture.
At the same time, Pakistani security services have apprehended several key al Qaeda operatives in the country's teeming cities. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, reputed to have planned many of the organization's terrorist attacks, including those on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was captured in Rawalpindi in March 2003. The previous September, the reputed coordinator of the Sept. 11 attacks, Ramzi Binalshibh, was captured in the port city of Karachi.
Zawahiri, who is considered by many to be al Qaeda's principal strategist, has released several videotapes in which he has urged Muslims worldwide to join a holy war against the United States. In a video released Jan. 6, he suggested President Bush's decision to reduce U.S. troop strength there constituted a victory for al Qaeda in Iraq.
U.S. and Pakistani authorities have said they have come close to killing Zawahiri in the past. In early 2004, Pakistani security forces believed they had him surrounded in the tribal areas, only to discover he had slipped away. On Saturday, al-Arabiya television reported that Zawahiri was alive, citing a source it said had been in contact with al Qaeda. "Reports of his death are wishful thinking," the network quoted unnamed sources as saying.
Residents of the largely autonomous tribal areas have frequently resisted efforts to capture or kill al Qaeda fugitives and have denounced the Bush and Musharraf administrations over attacks in the region. Friday's missile strike seemed to have fanned such sentiment.
We want a swift government response to this aggression," said Zarwali Rahbar, a tribal elder who spoke at the rally near Damadola. "General Musharraf should protect us and not the U.S. interests in Pakistan."
U.S. military sources said Pakistan's intelligence service had been heavily involved in the attack. Senior Pakistani officials would not confirm involvement in the strike but acknowledged regular intelligence cooperation with the United States.
"The intelligence sharing is on an almost daily basis," said a senior Pakistani intelligence official, who said the cooperation included sharing of both human and electronic intelligence sources.
Late Saturday, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it had lodged a formal protest over the incident with the United States, but it left open the possibility that outsiders were operating in the vicinity of the strike.
"According to preliminary investigations, there was foreign presence in the area and that in all probability was targeted from across the border in Afghanistan," the statement said. "The investigations are still continuing. Meanwhile the Foreign Office has lodged a protest with the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad."
In Washington, the State Department said it had not received a formal protest.
A protest by Pakistan would be its second in less than a week, the first having come after a missile struck a village in the North Waziristan tribal region close to the Afghan border. That attack killed eight people, and local officials said terrorist suspects were not among them.
In December, a senior al Qaeda leader, Hamza Rabia, was believed to have been killed in a CIA-led strike in Pakistan along the Afghan border.
Musharraf did not address the attack directly Saturday. But while speaking at a public rally in the town of Sawabi, a hotbed of Islamic radicalism in North-West Frontier province, he asked people not to let suspected militants hide in their neighborhoods. "The consequences will be severe," he said.
Human rights organizations in Pakistan were vocal in condemning the attack, which they said undermined the cause of democracy in a country whose president came to power in a military coup in 1999.
"When the U.S. and other Western powers commit such a gross violation of human rights, it further weakens our position to highlight the human rights violations of Pakistan's military ruler in the world," said Afrasiab Khattak, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
Khan reported from Karachi, Pakistan. Staff writers Dafna Linzer and Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...6011400961.html?referrer=email&referrer=email
<font size="4">Thousands Protest After Attack In Pakistan Leaves 17 Dead</font size></center>
Washington Post
By Griff Witte and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 15, 2006; Page A01
KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 14 -- Pakistani officials said Saturday that a U.S. missile strike intended to kill al Qaeda deputy Ayman Zawahiri had missed its target but had killed 17 people, including six women and six children.
Tens of thousands of Pakistanis staged an angry anti-American protest near the remote village of Damadola, about 120 miles northwest of Islamabad, where Friday's attack took place. According to witnesses, the demonstrators shouted, "Death to America!" and "Death to Musharraf!" -- referring to Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf -- and the offices of at least one U.S.-backed aid organization were ransacked and set ablaze.
In Washington, U.S. intelligence sources said it was too early to know whether the strike had killed Zawahiri, 54, an Egyptian physician who is al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's top aide. "The outcome of this doesn't seem decided," said a source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
U.S. officials defended the strike, saying it was the right course of action based on timely intelligence about Zawahiri's whereabouts early Friday. Zawahiri had been under surveillance by the CIA for two weeks, security sources said.
The CIA, which military and intelligence sources say carried out the attack with a type of unmanned aircraft called a Predator, declined to comment Saturday.
Local authorities denied that any foreigners had been present in the area.
"We can say with full authority that those who were killed were all innocent permanent residents of the village Damadola," said Sirajul Haq, senior minister of Pakistan's North-West Frontier province. "Any independent probe would confirm that no foreigner was in the vicinity of the neighborhood targeted by the U.S. missiles."
Two officials with Pakistan's military intelligence service confirmed the local leaders' assessment. The Pakistani government in Islamabad, however, produced a more muted response, saying it had formally protested the strike to the U.S. government but conceding there may have been people in the area whom the United States would have an interest in attacking.
The strike was the latest in a series aimed at al Qaeda fugitives believed to be hiding in the region along Pakistan's porous and largely lawless border with Afghanistan.
After al Qaeda carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, U.S. forces and Afghan militias toppled the Afghan Taliban movement, which had sheltered and supported bin Laden's organization. Bin Laden, Zawahiri and many other al Qaeda leaders are believed to have crossed the border and taken refuge in Pakistan's tribal regions, where they have eluded capture.
At the same time, Pakistani security services have apprehended several key al Qaeda operatives in the country's teeming cities. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, reputed to have planned many of the organization's terrorist attacks, including those on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was captured in Rawalpindi in March 2003. The previous September, the reputed coordinator of the Sept. 11 attacks, Ramzi Binalshibh, was captured in the port city of Karachi.
Zawahiri, who is considered by many to be al Qaeda's principal strategist, has released several videotapes in which he has urged Muslims worldwide to join a holy war against the United States. In a video released Jan. 6, he suggested President Bush's decision to reduce U.S. troop strength there constituted a victory for al Qaeda in Iraq.
U.S. and Pakistani authorities have said they have come close to killing Zawahiri in the past. In early 2004, Pakistani security forces believed they had him surrounded in the tribal areas, only to discover he had slipped away. On Saturday, al-Arabiya television reported that Zawahiri was alive, citing a source it said had been in contact with al Qaeda. "Reports of his death are wishful thinking," the network quoted unnamed sources as saying.
Residents of the largely autonomous tribal areas have frequently resisted efforts to capture or kill al Qaeda fugitives and have denounced the Bush and Musharraf administrations over attacks in the region. Friday's missile strike seemed to have fanned such sentiment.
We want a swift government response to this aggression," said Zarwali Rahbar, a tribal elder who spoke at the rally near Damadola. "General Musharraf should protect us and not the U.S. interests in Pakistan."
U.S. military sources said Pakistan's intelligence service had been heavily involved in the attack. Senior Pakistani officials would not confirm involvement in the strike but acknowledged regular intelligence cooperation with the United States.
"The intelligence sharing is on an almost daily basis," said a senior Pakistani intelligence official, who said the cooperation included sharing of both human and electronic intelligence sources.
Late Saturday, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it had lodged a formal protest over the incident with the United States, but it left open the possibility that outsiders were operating in the vicinity of the strike.
"According to preliminary investigations, there was foreign presence in the area and that in all probability was targeted from across the border in Afghanistan," the statement said. "The investigations are still continuing. Meanwhile the Foreign Office has lodged a protest with the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad."
In Washington, the State Department said it had not received a formal protest.
A protest by Pakistan would be its second in less than a week, the first having come after a missile struck a village in the North Waziristan tribal region close to the Afghan border. That attack killed eight people, and local officials said terrorist suspects were not among them.
In December, a senior al Qaeda leader, Hamza Rabia, was believed to have been killed in a CIA-led strike in Pakistan along the Afghan border.
Musharraf did not address the attack directly Saturday. But while speaking at a public rally in the town of Sawabi, a hotbed of Islamic radicalism in North-West Frontier province, he asked people not to let suspected militants hide in their neighborhoods. "The consequences will be severe," he said.
Human rights organizations in Pakistan were vocal in condemning the attack, which they said undermined the cause of democracy in a country whose president came to power in a military coup in 1999.
"When the U.S. and other Western powers commit such a gross violation of human rights, it further weakens our position to highlight the human rights violations of Pakistan's military ruler in the world," said Afrasiab Khattak, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
Khan reported from Karachi, Pakistan. Staff writers Dafna Linzer and Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...6011400961.html?referrer=email&referrer=email
<font size="5"><center>Al-Zawahiri and the Trail of Tapes</font size></center>
STRATFOR
January 16, 2006
Terrorism Intelligence Brief
The Jan. 14 airstrike by a U.S. Predator drone against a house in the Pakistani village of Damadola killed 18 people, but the target of the attack -- al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri -- apparently was not present at the time. Although there are many possible reasons for al-Zawahiri's absence, his own actions of late likely are helping U.S. hunters narrow in on his location.
Al-Zawahiri, in other words, has been on the jihadist equivalent of a media blitz. In 2004, al-Zawahiri and his boss, Osama bin Laden, released five tapes each -- some audio, some video. Since December 2004, however, tapes have been released almost exclusively by al-Zawahiri. In 2005, he released seven tapes by himself, five in the second half of the year alone. Bin Laden, meanwhile, has released no tape since Dec. 27, 2004. The increase in frequency of tapes may have allowed U.S. intelligence to track him.
These tapes most likely are produced in safe-houses in northwestern Pakistan and then dispatched through a series of couriers to Islamabad. The final courier in the chain makes a dead drop -- leaving the tape in a dumpster or under a bush near the office of Arab television station Al Jazeera. The courier then calls the contact, probably using a pre-paid calling card, to notify him of the location of the tape and instructions on how to retrieve it. U.S. intelligence agencies are aware of this, and undoubtedly are making great efforts to attempt to trace back the courier chain.
With each video al-Zawahiri releases, then, U.S. intelligence gets one step closer to ultimately finding him.
Although the al Qaeda couriers take precautions, the fact that each tape must pass through several hands makes it easier for U.S. intelligence to track it -- possibly back to its source. Somewhere along the way, one of these couriers could have been followed, leading counterterrorism operatives back to the periphery of al-Zawahiri's inner circle. By exploiting this process, U.S. intelligence could have acquired the information that led authorities to believe al-Zawahiri would be in Damadola in the early morning hours of Jan. 14.
In order to sanction a strike inside Pakistan, authorization would have had to come from high up the chain of command on the U.S. side. In addition, if the mission had been targeting al-Zawahiri -- the second man on the FBI's list of most-wanted terrorists after bin Laden himself -- the operatives in charge of the strike must have been confident they had their target in sight when the missiles were fired.
The U.S. military has not said whether al-Zawahiri was at the house at the time of the strike, but Pakistanis are claiming he did not attend the dinner in the Damadola home that night, but instead sent some of his aides.
If al-Zawahiri escaped the strike but some of his close aides were killed, the operation at least served to remind him of U.S. resolve. Given that members of al-Zawahiri's immediate family were killed in U.S. airstrikes during the Afghan invasion, he surely understands the threat. He also must know this attack was meant to finish him off.
STRATFOR
January 16, 2006
Terrorism Intelligence Brief
The Jan. 14 airstrike by a U.S. Predator drone against a house in the Pakistani village of Damadola killed 18 people, but the target of the attack -- al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri -- apparently was not present at the time. Although there are many possible reasons for al-Zawahiri's absence, his own actions of late likely are helping U.S. hunters narrow in on his location.
Al-Zawahiri, in other words, has been on the jihadist equivalent of a media blitz. In 2004, al-Zawahiri and his boss, Osama bin Laden, released five tapes each -- some audio, some video. Since December 2004, however, tapes have been released almost exclusively by al-Zawahiri. In 2005, he released seven tapes by himself, five in the second half of the year alone. Bin Laden, meanwhile, has released no tape since Dec. 27, 2004. The increase in frequency of tapes may have allowed U.S. intelligence to track him.
These tapes most likely are produced in safe-houses in northwestern Pakistan and then dispatched through a series of couriers to Islamabad. The final courier in the chain makes a dead drop -- leaving the tape in a dumpster or under a bush near the office of Arab television station Al Jazeera. The courier then calls the contact, probably using a pre-paid calling card, to notify him of the location of the tape and instructions on how to retrieve it. U.S. intelligence agencies are aware of this, and undoubtedly are making great efforts to attempt to trace back the courier chain.
With each video al-Zawahiri releases, then, U.S. intelligence gets one step closer to ultimately finding him.
Although the al Qaeda couriers take precautions, the fact that each tape must pass through several hands makes it easier for U.S. intelligence to track it -- possibly back to its source. Somewhere along the way, one of these couriers could have been followed, leading counterterrorism operatives back to the periphery of al-Zawahiri's inner circle. By exploiting this process, U.S. intelligence could have acquired the information that led authorities to believe al-Zawahiri would be in Damadola in the early morning hours of Jan. 14.
In order to sanction a strike inside Pakistan, authorization would have had to come from high up the chain of command on the U.S. side. In addition, if the mission had been targeting al-Zawahiri -- the second man on the FBI's list of most-wanted terrorists after bin Laden himself -- the operatives in charge of the strike must have been confident they had their target in sight when the missiles were fired.
The U.S. military has not said whether al-Zawahiri was at the house at the time of the strike, but Pakistanis are claiming he did not attend the dinner in the Damadola home that night, but instead sent some of his aides.
If al-Zawahiri escaped the strike but some of his close aides were killed, the operation at least served to remind him of U.S. resolve. Given that members of al-Zawahiri's immediate family were killed in U.S. airstrikes during the Afghan invasion, he surely understands the threat. He also must know this attack was meant to finish him off.
Hell No They Ain't Get His Ass. Would Bush Really Kill One Of His Homies? You See Saddam's Heart Is Still Pumpin' Kool Aid. He Should Have Been Blasted On The Spot Too.
<font size="5"><center>Senior Qaeda Members Said to Be Killed in Airstrike </font size></center>
By CARLOTTA GALL
and DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: January 18, 2006
PESHAWAR, Pakistan. Jan. 18 - Two senior trainers with Al Qaeda and the son-in-law of Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, were among those killed in the American airstrikes in remote northeastern Pakistan last week, two Pakistani officials said here on Wednesday.
The bodies of the men have not been recovered, but the two officials said the Pakistani authorities had been able to establish through intelligence sources the names of three of those killed in the strikes, and maybe a fourth. Both of the officials have provided reliable intelligence information in the past, but neither would be named because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.
American counterterrorism officials declined to say whether the four Qaeda members were in fact killed in the raid, or whether the men were among those who were the targets of it. But one American official said, "These are the kinds of people we would have expected to have been there."
If any or all were indeed killed, it would be a stinging blow to Al Qaeda's operations, said the American officials, who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized by their agencies to speak for attribution. They said all four of the men named by the Pakistani officials were among the top level of Al Qaeda's inner circle of leadership.
The Pakistani officials agreed that the deaths would be a strong setback to Al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas, but acknowledged that hundreds of foreign militants may still be at large in the region.
The airstrikes, which killed 18 civilians, among them women and children, have caused anger across the country, particularly in the restive and autonomous tribal regions, and forced the government to condemn the intrusion by United States warplanes.
Some officials and opposition politicians have accused the government of inventing the presence of foreign militants in the area to mitigate the political fallout. But Pakistani security officials have been consistent in their comments and appear increasingly confident of their information. American officials, while more cautious, have repeated much of the same information.
At least one of the men believed by the Pakistani officials to have been killed, a 52-year-old Egyptian, known here as Abu Khabab al-Masri, is on the United States most-wanted list with a $5 million reward for help in his capture. His real name is Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, who according to the United States government Web site rewardsforjustice.net, was an expert in explosives and poisons.
Abu Khabab, the Web site says, operated the Qaeda training camp at Darrunta, near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, and trained hundreds of fighters. He was responsible for putting together a training manual with recipes for crude chemical and biological weapons, the Web site says.
Among those Abu Khabab trained was Abu Zubaydah, Al Qaeda's No. 3 operative, who was captured in 2002 in the Pakistani town of Faisalabad, one of the Pakistani officials said.
Another Egyptian, known by the alias Abu Ubayda al-Misri, was also believed killed, the Pakistani officials said. He was the chief of insurgent operations in a region near the area where the airstrikes occurred, according to one of the Pakistani officials.
As chief of operations, Abu Ubayda commanded attacks on American forces in his part of southern Afghanistan, and gave training and support to the insurgent groups active in the area. He also served as a liaison for senior Qaeda leaders, and provided logistics and security for the top Qaeda people in the region, the official said.
After the fall of the Taliban, Abu Ubayda moved to the Pakistani town of Shakai, in South Waziristan, where he commanded a small group of Arabs, but left the area when the Pakistani military mounted operations against the foreign militants there in February 2004, the officials said.
The third man believed to have been killed was a Moroccan, Abd al-Rahman al-Maghrebi, who is the son-in-law of Mr. Zawahiri, the officials said. Mr. Maghrebi was in charge of Qaeda propaganda in the region, and may have been responsible for distributing a number of CD's showing the activities of Taliban and Qaeda fighters in southern Afghanistan in recent months.
A fourth man, Mustafa Osman, another Egyptian and an associate of Mr. Zawahiri's, may also have been killed, one Pakistani security official said. But he was less certain of his fate. There may have been one or two more foreign militants killed as well, he said.
One of the American officials said another senior Qaeda figure, identified as Khalid Habib, may have been at the site of the attack. His name was circulating among Pakistani officials as someone who might also have been killed, though again they were uncertain.
Mr. Habib is Al Qaeda's overall operational commander in Pakistan and Afghanistan, an important post, and would be the most significant of those who might have been at the site of the attack, which occurred in the village of Damadola, about 3:15 a.m. Friday.
After an initial investigation into the strike, Pakistani provincial authorities said in a statement on Tuesday that 10 to 12 foreign militants were believed to have been invited to a dinner in the village on the night of the Jan. 13 strike.
The target of the raid, American officials have said, was Al Qaeda's No. 2, Mr. Zawahiri, but they have acknowledged that he was not killed in the attack and Pakistani officials say that Mr. Zawahiri failed to show up for the dinner that night.
The statement from Pakistani provincial authorities said that four to five bodies were taken from the wreckage of the bombing quickly after the strikes and secretly buried somewhere in the mountains.
One of the men who died with his family in the wreckage of his home, Bakhtpur Khan, was named by a Qaeda operative, Faraj al-Libi, as a sympathizer, one of the Pakistani officials said. Mr. Libi, who was captured in Pakistan last summer, told an interrogator that he had met Mr. Zawahiri in Mr. Khan's house in Damadola previously, the official said.
It is unlikely that Mr. Zawahiri was in the house at the time of the bombing, because he would have been accompanied by a larger entourage, one of the Pakistani officials said.
Villagers, many of whom are sympathetic to Taliban and Qaeda elements, continue to insist there were no foreign militants in the village at the time of the airstrikes.
Al Arabiya television reported that Mr. Zawahiri was alive, quoting a member of Al Qaeda, in the days after the strike. A news agency in Afghanistan, Pajhwok Afghan News, has also reported that a Qaeda member telephoned the agency to say that Mr. Zawahiri was safe.
The news agency identified the caller as Ahmad Solaiman, a Moroccan who serves as a spokesman for the group. In a Jan. 18 dispatch, the agency quoted him saying that Mr. Zawahiri "is alive" and that "reports about his death are false."
An American counterterrorism official said the claim was being viewed with a great deal of skepticism, because Al Qaeda usually chooses more mainstream outlets to issue public statements.
A Pakistani security official said soon after the strikes that he was confident that Mr. Zawahiri had survived.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/18/i...&en=4f46842b2c418228&ei=5094&partner=homepage
By CARLOTTA GALL
and DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: January 18, 2006
PESHAWAR, Pakistan. Jan. 18 - Two senior trainers with Al Qaeda and the son-in-law of Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, were among those killed in the American airstrikes in remote northeastern Pakistan last week, two Pakistani officials said here on Wednesday.
The bodies of the men have not been recovered, but the two officials said the Pakistani authorities had been able to establish through intelligence sources the names of three of those killed in the strikes, and maybe a fourth. Both of the officials have provided reliable intelligence information in the past, but neither would be named because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.
American counterterrorism officials declined to say whether the four Qaeda members were in fact killed in the raid, or whether the men were among those who were the targets of it. But one American official said, "These are the kinds of people we would have expected to have been there."
If any or all were indeed killed, it would be a stinging blow to Al Qaeda's operations, said the American officials, who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized by their agencies to speak for attribution. They said all four of the men named by the Pakistani officials were among the top level of Al Qaeda's inner circle of leadership.
The Pakistani officials agreed that the deaths would be a strong setback to Al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas, but acknowledged that hundreds of foreign militants may still be at large in the region.
The airstrikes, which killed 18 civilians, among them women and children, have caused anger across the country, particularly in the restive and autonomous tribal regions, and forced the government to condemn the intrusion by United States warplanes.
Some officials and opposition politicians have accused the government of inventing the presence of foreign militants in the area to mitigate the political fallout. But Pakistani security officials have been consistent in their comments and appear increasingly confident of their information. American officials, while more cautious, have repeated much of the same information.
At least one of the men believed by the Pakistani officials to have been killed, a 52-year-old Egyptian, known here as Abu Khabab al-Masri, is on the United States most-wanted list with a $5 million reward for help in his capture. His real name is Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, who according to the United States government Web site rewardsforjustice.net, was an expert in explosives and poisons.
Abu Khabab, the Web site says, operated the Qaeda training camp at Darrunta, near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, and trained hundreds of fighters. He was responsible for putting together a training manual with recipes for crude chemical and biological weapons, the Web site says.
Among those Abu Khabab trained was Abu Zubaydah, Al Qaeda's No. 3 operative, who was captured in 2002 in the Pakistani town of Faisalabad, one of the Pakistani officials said.
Another Egyptian, known by the alias Abu Ubayda al-Misri, was also believed killed, the Pakistani officials said. He was the chief of insurgent operations in a region near the area where the airstrikes occurred, according to one of the Pakistani officials.
As chief of operations, Abu Ubayda commanded attacks on American forces in his part of southern Afghanistan, and gave training and support to the insurgent groups active in the area. He also served as a liaison for senior Qaeda leaders, and provided logistics and security for the top Qaeda people in the region, the official said.
After the fall of the Taliban, Abu Ubayda moved to the Pakistani town of Shakai, in South Waziristan, where he commanded a small group of Arabs, but left the area when the Pakistani military mounted operations against the foreign militants there in February 2004, the officials said.
The third man believed to have been killed was a Moroccan, Abd al-Rahman al-Maghrebi, who is the son-in-law of Mr. Zawahiri, the officials said. Mr. Maghrebi was in charge of Qaeda propaganda in the region, and may have been responsible for distributing a number of CD's showing the activities of Taliban and Qaeda fighters in southern Afghanistan in recent months.
A fourth man, Mustafa Osman, another Egyptian and an associate of Mr. Zawahiri's, may also have been killed, one Pakistani security official said. But he was less certain of his fate. There may have been one or two more foreign militants killed as well, he said.
One of the American officials said another senior Qaeda figure, identified as Khalid Habib, may have been at the site of the attack. His name was circulating among Pakistani officials as someone who might also have been killed, though again they were uncertain.
Mr. Habib is Al Qaeda's overall operational commander in Pakistan and Afghanistan, an important post, and would be the most significant of those who might have been at the site of the attack, which occurred in the village of Damadola, about 3:15 a.m. Friday.
After an initial investigation into the strike, Pakistani provincial authorities said in a statement on Tuesday that 10 to 12 foreign militants were believed to have been invited to a dinner in the village on the night of the Jan. 13 strike.
The target of the raid, American officials have said, was Al Qaeda's No. 2, Mr. Zawahiri, but they have acknowledged that he was not killed in the attack and Pakistani officials say that Mr. Zawahiri failed to show up for the dinner that night.
The statement from Pakistani provincial authorities said that four to five bodies were taken from the wreckage of the bombing quickly after the strikes and secretly buried somewhere in the mountains.
One of the men who died with his family in the wreckage of his home, Bakhtpur Khan, was named by a Qaeda operative, Faraj al-Libi, as a sympathizer, one of the Pakistani officials said. Mr. Libi, who was captured in Pakistan last summer, told an interrogator that he had met Mr. Zawahiri in Mr. Khan's house in Damadola previously, the official said.
It is unlikely that Mr. Zawahiri was in the house at the time of the bombing, because he would have been accompanied by a larger entourage, one of the Pakistani officials said.
Villagers, many of whom are sympathetic to Taliban and Qaeda elements, continue to insist there were no foreign militants in the village at the time of the airstrikes.
Al Arabiya television reported that Mr. Zawahiri was alive, quoting a member of Al Qaeda, in the days after the strike. A news agency in Afghanistan, Pajhwok Afghan News, has also reported that a Qaeda member telephoned the agency to say that Mr. Zawahiri was safe.
The news agency identified the caller as Ahmad Solaiman, a Moroccan who serves as a spokesman for the group. In a Jan. 18 dispatch, the agency quoted him saying that Mr. Zawahiri "is alive" and that "reports about his death are false."
An American counterterrorism official said the claim was being viewed with a great deal of skepticism, because Al Qaeda usually chooses more mainstream outlets to issue public statements.
A Pakistani security official said soon after the strikes that he was confident that Mr. Zawahiri had survived.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/18/i...&en=4f46842b2c418228&ei=5094&partner=homepage
[frame]http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HA25Df01.html[/frame]
[hide]South Asia
Jan 25, 2006
Pakistan on the spot over Iran nuclear secrets
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Reverberations continue from the attack by a US Predator drone on the village of Damadola in Pakistan's Bajur tribal area last week. The raid was designed to root out al-Qaeda operatives believed to be in the area, but larger forces are at play.
On the one hand, some call the strike, in which 18 people were killed, a calculated risk by the US in the "war on terror". Others
claim that it was a part of President General Pervez Musharraf's delicate tightrope walk to balance his image at home with that of the face he projects abroad as a US ally.
President Shaukat Aziz, on a visit to the United States, has categorically denied on US television that Pakistan was told in advance of the raid, and also rejected US claims that a few senior al-Qaeda figures died in the attack. However, Asia Times Online has reported that Islamabad definitely knew of the attack (see Pakistan's misplaced ire over US misfire, January 18).
Certainly, the attack in Bajur has many facets to it. On one side, it has broken the semblance of niceties and courtesies between Washington and Islamabad, at the same time conveying the United States' desperation in making significant progress against al-Qaeda.
And at least one person well versed in the labyrinthine geopolitics of the region sees the attack as a way of ratcheting up pressure on Musharraf to hand over nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan for direct interrogation by the US.
According to the former director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), retired Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, Washington wants Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program, to provide the smoking gun it needs to prove that Iran has a clandestine nuclear-weapons program. Khan, under virtual house arrest in Pakistan, has confessed to nuclear-proliferation activities, including dealings with Iran. Pakistan refuses any access to him.
The issue now, therefore, is just how much further the US will go (more attacks on Pakistani territory?), and how much Pakistan will cooperate in such endeavors, given the growing groundswell of anti-US sentiment in Pakistan.
Pakistan is definitely caught between a rock and a hard place. But then so, too, is the US.
Blame it on Afghanistan
Suicide bombings in Afghanistan are now widespread. These began last winter - for the first time in the history of the country - and have escalated this cold season, allowing the resistance to show its muscle in this traditionally quiet period for militant activities.
The US has invested millions of dollars in Afghanistan to nurture loyalties among clerics, soldiers, the administration and political leaders. It applied a technique of creating vested interests, which initially worked.
However, the organized terror tactics of the Taliban have seriously undermined these efforts, and with the way in which the Afghan resistance is growing, there is a strong chance that all pro-US political developments will go back to square one.
The difficulty for the US is that the resistance uses Pakistani territory both as a haven and to obtain supplies. More than a dozen remote passes in the Pakistani-administered tribal areas link the two countries, and a wild no-man's land also provides a sanctuary for hit-and-run militants launching attacks in Afghanistan.
The United States' frustration at this situation has forced it to undertake its own raids inside Pakistan.
Pakistani intelligence agencies have been sharing intelligence with the US ever since Islamabad sided with Washington in the "war on terror" after September 11, 2001, and they have never hidden the fact that the tribal areas were likely sanctuaries for the Afghan resistance, including Taliban commanders, al-Qaeda members and commanders of the Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan, a key component of the resistance.
Last year, Pakistani agencies confirmed with US intelligence that there was a strong pro-Taliban movement in North Waziristan's area of Dand-i-Darpakhel, from where attacks were launched on Khost across the border. A joint team of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the ISI conducted a raid, but except for a few foot soldiers they failed to arrest any significant figures, such as Jalaluddin Haqqani or any of his top commanders, including his son Siraj.
In sharing intelligence with the Americans, Pakistan's strategic quarters did not believe that the US would dare step into the tribal areas as traditionally they have been a death trap for invading armies. However, the US had other ideas.
Commander Nek Mohammed was the first target. Nek, a charismatic former Taliban commander, was killed in a raid near Wana, the district headquarters of South Waziristan, in June 2004. Pakistan and the US had shared all information on him, but while Pakistan wanted to strike a deal with him, the Americans saw him as a key enemy and wanted him eliminated - which they did with a laser-guided missile.
Al-Qaeda commander Hamza Rabia is a second example of US intervention in Pakistan. He was tracked and then killed by a missile fired by a US Predator in Mir Ali, North Waziristan, last year.
And now there is the incident at Bajur. The Americans had tracked the movement of militants to and from Kunar in Afghanistan, and they informed the Pakistani authorities that they would carry out action against them. US spy drones had been flying in the Bajur-Kunar area for three days prior to the attack, and had been tracked on Pakistani radar.
Security officials tell Asia Times Online that these three examples are a prelude of things to come as the US tracks more bases of the Afghan resistance in areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. This region starts in Jalalabad-Torkham and ends at Kandahar-Chaman. At times it branches into areas controlled by Pakistan.
Pakistan argues that it is extremely difficult to send the military into this rugged territory, and that if US forces were allowed to operate there, the Taliban-led insurgency would be dragged into Pakistani territory.
The US appears tired of hearing this, and can be expected to take matters more into its own hands.
The Iran factor
"The Bajur attack is more political than military," said former ISI chief Gul. "On one side it carried a message that they [the Americans] would play their game of 'war on terror' on their terms, and would destroy their enemies, even on Pakistani soil. The killing of Nek Mohammed, Hamza Rabia and the current incident of Bajur are examples.
"However, there is reverse swing [an unexpected angle] in this game," said Gul. "The Americans cannot get any concrete evidence on Iran's nuclear program [that it plans to build nuclear weapons], and without such evidence they will not take the matter to the [United Nations] Security Council. They have been pressing hard on Pakistan to hand over Dr A Q Khan for interrogation because they understand that this is the only way to get evidence on Iran's nuclear program. So apparently they are trying to put Pakistan in a serious quagmire by giving it the option to either bear constant air strikes in Pakistani territory or hand over Dr Khan," Gul maintained.
"At the same time, to further strangulate Musharraf, they are once again beating the drum of democracy. Now there are clear voices from Washington in favor of democracy in Pakistan. I recall a situation in which the late Pakistani premier, Mohammed Khan Junejo, visited the US [in 1986], and when he returned, his attitude towards the late [dictator] General Zia ul-Haq changed. To me, Shaukat Aziz' [present] US visit, given the current situation, is of significance and we will have to see what secret message he brings back with him," Gul said.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Bureau Chief, Pakistan Asia Times Online. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
[/hide]
[hide]South Asia
Jan 25, 2006
Pakistan on the spot over Iran nuclear secrets
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Reverberations continue from the attack by a US Predator drone on the village of Damadola in Pakistan's Bajur tribal area last week. The raid was designed to root out al-Qaeda operatives believed to be in the area, but larger forces are at play.
On the one hand, some call the strike, in which 18 people were killed, a calculated risk by the US in the "war on terror". Others
claim that it was a part of President General Pervez Musharraf's delicate tightrope walk to balance his image at home with that of the face he projects abroad as a US ally.
President Shaukat Aziz, on a visit to the United States, has categorically denied on US television that Pakistan was told in advance of the raid, and also rejected US claims that a few senior al-Qaeda figures died in the attack. However, Asia Times Online has reported that Islamabad definitely knew of the attack (see Pakistan's misplaced ire over US misfire, January 18).
Certainly, the attack in Bajur has many facets to it. On one side, it has broken the semblance of niceties and courtesies between Washington and Islamabad, at the same time conveying the United States' desperation in making significant progress against al-Qaeda.
And at least one person well versed in the labyrinthine geopolitics of the region sees the attack as a way of ratcheting up pressure on Musharraf to hand over nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan for direct interrogation by the US.
According to the former director general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), retired Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, Washington wants Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program, to provide the smoking gun it needs to prove that Iran has a clandestine nuclear-weapons program. Khan, under virtual house arrest in Pakistan, has confessed to nuclear-proliferation activities, including dealings with Iran. Pakistan refuses any access to him.
The issue now, therefore, is just how much further the US will go (more attacks on Pakistani territory?), and how much Pakistan will cooperate in such endeavors, given the growing groundswell of anti-US sentiment in Pakistan.
Pakistan is definitely caught between a rock and a hard place. But then so, too, is the US.
Blame it on Afghanistan
Suicide bombings in Afghanistan are now widespread. These began last winter - for the first time in the history of the country - and have escalated this cold season, allowing the resistance to show its muscle in this traditionally quiet period for militant activities.
The US has invested millions of dollars in Afghanistan to nurture loyalties among clerics, soldiers, the administration and political leaders. It applied a technique of creating vested interests, which initially worked.
However, the organized terror tactics of the Taliban have seriously undermined these efforts, and with the way in which the Afghan resistance is growing, there is a strong chance that all pro-US political developments will go back to square one.
The difficulty for the US is that the resistance uses Pakistani territory both as a haven and to obtain supplies. More than a dozen remote passes in the Pakistani-administered tribal areas link the two countries, and a wild no-man's land also provides a sanctuary for hit-and-run militants launching attacks in Afghanistan.
The United States' frustration at this situation has forced it to undertake its own raids inside Pakistan.
Pakistani intelligence agencies have been sharing intelligence with the US ever since Islamabad sided with Washington in the "war on terror" after September 11, 2001, and they have never hidden the fact that the tribal areas were likely sanctuaries for the Afghan resistance, including Taliban commanders, al-Qaeda members and commanders of the Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan, a key component of the resistance.
Last year, Pakistani agencies confirmed with US intelligence that there was a strong pro-Taliban movement in North Waziristan's area of Dand-i-Darpakhel, from where attacks were launched on Khost across the border. A joint team of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the ISI conducted a raid, but except for a few foot soldiers they failed to arrest any significant figures, such as Jalaluddin Haqqani or any of his top commanders, including his son Siraj.
In sharing intelligence with the Americans, Pakistan's strategic quarters did not believe that the US would dare step into the tribal areas as traditionally they have been a death trap for invading armies. However, the US had other ideas.
Commander Nek Mohammed was the first target. Nek, a charismatic former Taliban commander, was killed in a raid near Wana, the district headquarters of South Waziristan, in June 2004. Pakistan and the US had shared all information on him, but while Pakistan wanted to strike a deal with him, the Americans saw him as a key enemy and wanted him eliminated - which they did with a laser-guided missile.
Al-Qaeda commander Hamza Rabia is a second example of US intervention in Pakistan. He was tracked and then killed by a missile fired by a US Predator in Mir Ali, North Waziristan, last year.
And now there is the incident at Bajur. The Americans had tracked the movement of militants to and from Kunar in Afghanistan, and they informed the Pakistani authorities that they would carry out action against them. US spy drones had been flying in the Bajur-Kunar area for three days prior to the attack, and had been tracked on Pakistani radar.
Security officials tell Asia Times Online that these three examples are a prelude of things to come as the US tracks more bases of the Afghan resistance in areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. This region starts in Jalalabad-Torkham and ends at Kandahar-Chaman. At times it branches into areas controlled by Pakistan.
Pakistan argues that it is extremely difficult to send the military into this rugged territory, and that if US forces were allowed to operate there, the Taliban-led insurgency would be dragged into Pakistani territory.
The US appears tired of hearing this, and can be expected to take matters more into its own hands.
The Iran factor
"The Bajur attack is more political than military," said former ISI chief Gul. "On one side it carried a message that they [the Americans] would play their game of 'war on terror' on their terms, and would destroy their enemies, even on Pakistani soil. The killing of Nek Mohammed, Hamza Rabia and the current incident of Bajur are examples.
"However, there is reverse swing [an unexpected angle] in this game," said Gul. "The Americans cannot get any concrete evidence on Iran's nuclear program [that it plans to build nuclear weapons], and without such evidence they will not take the matter to the [United Nations] Security Council. They have been pressing hard on Pakistan to hand over Dr A Q Khan for interrogation because they understand that this is the only way to get evidence on Iran's nuclear program. So apparently they are trying to put Pakistan in a serious quagmire by giving it the option to either bear constant air strikes in Pakistani territory or hand over Dr Khan," Gul maintained.
"At the same time, to further strangulate Musharraf, they are once again beating the drum of democracy. Now there are clear voices from Washington in favor of democracy in Pakistan. I recall a situation in which the late Pakistani premier, Mohammed Khan Junejo, visited the US [in 1986], and when he returned, his attitude towards the late [dictator] General Zia ul-Haq changed. To me, Shaukat Aziz' [present] US visit, given the current situation, is of significance and we will have to see what secret message he brings back with him," Gul said.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Bureau Chief, Pakistan Asia Times Online. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
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<font size="5"><center>Qaeda Deputy Taunts Bush for 'Failure' in Airstrike </font size></center>
Washington Post
By HASSAN M. FATTAH
Published: January 31, 2006
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Jan. 30 — More than a week after the Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri resurfaced in an audiotape posted on the Internet, Al Jazeera on Monday broadcast a video of Mr. Zawahiri berating the United States for a bombing attack on a place where he had been suspected of being, and threatening further attacks on the United States.
Mr. Zawahiri, shown wearing white robes and a white turban, said the Jan. 13 airstrike in the northeastern Pakistan village of Damadola had killed only "innocents," and called President Bush a "butcher" and a "failure" for the attack. He said the United States had lost its chance for a truce offered by Osama bin Laden in an audio recording broadcast Jan. 19 by Al Jazeera, an Arab satellite network.
"Butcher of Washington, you are not only defeated and a liar, but also a failure," he said, speaking of Mr. Bush. "You are a curse on your own nation and you have brought and will bring them only catastrophes and tragedies."
An American counterterrorism official said that the videotape "demonstrates that Al Qaeda's propaganda apparatus is still functioning."
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the rules of his government office, called Mr. Zawahiri's message "an attempt to reassure the Qaeda rank and file that he's still alive."
Thirteen villagers were killed in the strike, setting off widespread protests in Pakistan. American officials say that several Qaeda figures were among those killed, but have not determined who they were.
"The videotape proves that Ayman is closely following what is happening around him." said Mohammad Salah, Cairo bureau chief of the pan-Arab daily newspaper Al Hayat, an expert on Islamist groups.
Though the message was aired on the eve of President Bush's State of the Union address, the intelligence official said that was not necessarily intentional. Al Qaeda "operates on its own schedule, and I wouldn't read too much into the timing," he said.
Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington for this article, and Abeer Allam from Cairo.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/31/i...9d072ff3&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin
Washington Post
By HASSAN M. FATTAH
Published: January 31, 2006
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Jan. 30 — More than a week after the Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri resurfaced in an audiotape posted on the Internet, Al Jazeera on Monday broadcast a video of Mr. Zawahiri berating the United States for a bombing attack on a place where he had been suspected of being, and threatening further attacks on the United States.
Mr. Zawahiri, shown wearing white robes and a white turban, said the Jan. 13 airstrike in the northeastern Pakistan village of Damadola had killed only "innocents," and called President Bush a "butcher" and a "failure" for the attack. He said the United States had lost its chance for a truce offered by Osama bin Laden in an audio recording broadcast Jan. 19 by Al Jazeera, an Arab satellite network.
"Butcher of Washington, you are not only defeated and a liar, but also a failure," he said, speaking of Mr. Bush. "You are a curse on your own nation and you have brought and will bring them only catastrophes and tragedies."
An American counterterrorism official said that the videotape "demonstrates that Al Qaeda's propaganda apparatus is still functioning."
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the rules of his government office, called Mr. Zawahiri's message "an attempt to reassure the Qaeda rank and file that he's still alive."
Thirteen villagers were killed in the strike, setting off widespread protests in Pakistan. American officials say that several Qaeda figures were among those killed, but have not determined who they were.
"The videotape proves that Ayman is closely following what is happening around him." said Mohammad Salah, Cairo bureau chief of the pan-Arab daily newspaper Al Hayat, an expert on Islamist groups.
Though the message was aired on the eve of President Bush's State of the Union address, the intelligence official said that was not necessarily intentional. Al Qaeda "operates on its own schedule, and I wouldn't read too much into the timing," he said.
Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington for this article, and Abeer Allam from Cairo.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/31/i...9d072ff3&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin