Al-Qaeda kingpin gets away in
Pakistan By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Pakistan came tantalizingly close this
week to presenting President George W Bush with the
perfect election present and a major coup in the "war on
terror". But at the last minute the suspect apparently
got away.
On Tuesday, Pakistan and
US security forces launched a major operation in
Karachi, which different sources based in Washington and
Karachi told Asia Times Online was aimed at catching
Abu Faraj al-Libi, a Libyan believed to be the No 3 in
al-Qaeda and from al-Qaeda's North African cell,
appointed as al-Qaeda's chief of South Asian operations.
After four hours, though, only a few people were
rounded up, and Faraj was nowhere to be found.
Authoritative Asia Times Online contacts insist
that Pakistani officials had earlier assured their US
counterparts that Faraj would be presented as a surprise
just before the US polls, and they speculate that
Islamabad had a last-moment change of mind pending the
outcome of those elections.
President
General Pervez Musharraf has become a key US ally in the
"war on terror", reaping both financial rewards as well
as tacit support for his authoritative administration.
Over the past months Pakistan has arrested several dozen
al-Qaeda and other suspects. But Musharraf's support for
the US has created a strong backlash in the country
among sections of the army and jihadi organizations.
Faraj
is believed to have taken over responsibility for
planning al-Qaeda attacks on the US and is thought to
have taken over as al-Qaeda's No 3 after the capture of
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in March 2003. Khalid was the
mastermind in organizing the attacks of September 11,
2001. Musharraf and a Pakistani army spokesperson have
alleged that Faraj masterminded the December 14 and 25
assassination attempts against Musharraf, and that on
the Corps Commander Karachi's motorcade, and other
incidents. Al-Qaeda's North Africa cell is the only one
of the terror organization's that remains relatively
intact, both in terms of financial and human resources.
Pakistan's Inter-Intelligence Service
and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) this
year tracked Faraj to the South Waziristan tribal area in
Pakistan and then to Punjab province, and ultimately
received tips that he would go to Karachi. This
information was based on the interrogations of others
suspects.
Intelligence sources had also rightly
tracked al-Qaeda head Osama bin Laden's deputy, Dr Aiman
al-Zawahiri, and Tahir Yuldash, the political leader of
the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, to Azam Warsak in
South Waziristan, but they then lost the trail. In turn,
bin Laden was confidently pinpointed in the Shawal
region that spans North Waziristan and Afghanistan. But
again the trail went dead.
This forced
officials from both Pakistan and the US to revise their
strategy, and instead of searching for targets in the
virtually inaccessible terrain of the Pakistan-Afghanistan
tribal areas, where targets can easily disappear, they
narrowed down their search to mainland Pakistani cities,
where they had already captured targets such as
Tanzanian Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and others who had fled
from South Waziristan. Khalfan was arrested in July this
year in connection with the twin bombings of US embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, which between them
killed 224 people and wounded more than 5,000 others.
Some
sources suspected that Faraj might already be in the
custody of Pakistani intelligence agencies awaiting a
timely unveiling, but prior to Tuesday's raid a senior
official rejected this theory when questioned by Asia
Times Online. "He is not in our custody, but not too far
from our range though. We have been tracking his
movements and he is very likely to be arrested very
soon," said the official.
Surprise, no
surprise On Tuesday, the residents of the
middle-class neighborhoods of Gulshan-i-Iqbal and
Gulistan-i-Jouhar in eastern Karachi were highly
panicked as army helicopters flew low overhead, and then
hovered near some residential apartments while
paramilitary forces cordoned off the area.
Police were quick to point out that
the operation had all the hallmarks of an
anti-terror operation, notably as they (the police) had
been excluded, apart from helping keep away curious
crowds. Different civilian and army agencies said the
operation was merely a commando drill, but the presence
of FBI agents and the comprehensive searches of a number
of apartments make this unlikely.
Syed
Saleem Shahzad is Bureau Chief, Pakistan, Asia Times
Online. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
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