The al-Qaeda brains behind Pakistan's
jihadis By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - "Security forces have broken the back
of al-Qaeda in Pakistan." So said a confident Interior
Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao on Wednesday after
the killing of Amjad Farooqi, who officials claim was
linked to the beheading more than two years ago of Wall Street
Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and to last year's
assassination attempts against President General Pervez
Musharraf.
However, despite a number of
successes, Pakistani security officials are fearful that
the jihadi networks have not yet fully flexed their
muscles and, more important, that the al-Qaeda operatives
from whom the jihadis draw their expertise are yet to be
eradicated.
Pakistan will soon announce
the arrests of more high-profile people, security sources
have told Asia Times Online, adding to the scores of
arrests that have been made over the past months in the
country's crackdown on jihadis and foreign elements in
the country. Sohail Akhtar, who is wanted in
connection with the May 8, 2002, bomb attack outside the
Sheraton Hotel in Karachi in which 10 French workers and
four Pakistanis were killed, was, according to Asia
Times Online sources, arrested about five months ago and
will be presented officially soon.
One of the
most potentially explosive developments that have been
nipped in the bud centers on a plan to carry out a
string of abductions or killings of relatives of
important people. Security agencies have tracked a
number of jihadis trained in the South Waziristan tribal
agency by Arab fighters to implement the abductions.
One of the most sensitive of these operations was
a plan to kidnap and subsequently behead Bilal Musharraf,
the only son of the president, in the US city
of Boston where he works. Local gangsters were to be hired in
the US and paid with money sent via the United Arab
Emirates. However, when some of the conspirators traveled
to Karachi to implement the plan they were caught and
the whole chain was arrested.
But there is
little room for complacency.
"Though we have
acquired unprecedented success in the 'war on terror',
that does not mean that we have completely wiped out the
networks. It is correct to say that so far the jihadis
have not used their real strength, for several reasons,"
a senior security official told Asia Times Online on
condition of anonymity.
"There has been some
dilemma among jihadis in that they are divided. They
have not been able to coordinate their strategies under
one umbrella, and furthermore every big name in jihadi
circles has his own fiefdom and is not ready to
collaborate or cooperate with another circle. In fact,
this has been a blessing for us. Had they coordinated
their strategies and if they all become active at the
same time, I tell you, it would have meant havoc in the
country, and no way would we have been able to control
them," the security official said.
"In the past
few months, several factors have combined to reduce the
jihadis' ability to strike. First, most of their top
leaders have been arrested. During interrogation they
spoke their minds, and many within their organizations
turned sides [to save themselves]. This is not wrong, of
course, this is what we call contacts or sources or
whatever. But as a result the jihadis feared that strong
proxy networks had been established in their groups, so
they became slow and defensive in their strategies.
"Second, a cash-flow problem. Previously, they
managed to get as much money as they wanted from Dubai
[in the UAE] through hawala [a private money
channel operated through changers and their agents].
However, after strict restrictions were imposed, they
have had serious problems in getting money. But they
have started to address this problem very recently and
we could yet see consequences later on," the security
official said.
Beyond cracking the jihadis,
though, the bigger problem of arresting the remnants of
al-Qaeda in the country remains, as they are the
masterminds behind the present problems.
"Al-Qaeda is the centrifugal force which has
somehow managed to get the jihadis organized. In hardly
18 months they developed training centers in South
Waziristan. They organized and trained people in various
groups, motivated them and gave them money, equipped
them with explosives and taught them different tasks and
then set them free to strike as per their own strategies
[which they also learned in South Waziristan].
"The local jihadis know how to make explosives,
they are trained to fire bullets, but they are naive in
strategy. Most of the local jihadis are half literate or
completely illiterate [Farooqi was an example]. They may
be chief of a maaskar [military camp] in Sarobi
[again, like Farooqi] and know how to use explosives and
shoot straight, but they are unable to prepare a full
plot for a high-profile murder or operation. To achieve
this task, Arab fighters who are highly qualified,
motivated, extremely trained, physically very fit and
extraordinarily intelligent are the ones who give local
jihadis the guidelines to carry out their operations.
Once al-Qaeda minds are out, controlling the jihadis
will be no problem," the security official maintained.
Syed Saleem Shahzadis Bureau Chief,
Pakistan, for Asia Times Online. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
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