AN ATOL EXCLUSIVE Confessions of a Pakistani spy
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
ISLAMABAD - Retired squadron leader Khalid Khawaja, a former Inter-Services
Intelligence official and a close friend of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden
during the resistance in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s, has
explained in videos sent to Asia Times Online how he was on a mission to broker
a deal between militants and the army when he was captured by militants, and
how he played a double game by deceiving a radical cleric into being arrested.
Khawaja was dismissed from the air force in the late 1980s and subsequently
earned a reputation of having close ties to some militant groups. Khawaja has
played an important behind-the-scenes role in both regional and national
politics. Before the US
attack on Afghanistan in late 2001, he was a part of the back-room diplomacy
between the US and the Taliban, which failed miserably.
The revelations appear in five video clips sent to Asia Times Online by an
al-Qaeda-linked group of militants from the Pakistani North Waziristan tribal
area. The clips appear to have been heavily edited, with some of Khawaja's
sentences - he is speaking in Urdu - cut off. At times it appears that a frail
Khawaja, in his early 60s, is under duress.
The following are five video clips sent to Asia Times Online featuring Khalid
Khawaja, who is speaking in Urdu. Video files are approximately 2.5Mb each in
MOV format.
Please click here to download the clips:
12
34
5
On March 25, Khawaja traveled to North Waziristan to interview commanders
Sirajuddin Haqqani and Waliur Rahman Mehsud. He was accompanied by a Pakistani, Asad Qureshi, a freelance documentary maker and a reporter with Channel 4, and Colonel Ameer Sultan
Tarrar, also a former long-time ISI official and once Pakistan's consul-general
in Herat in Afghanistan.
Tarrar was nicknamed "Colonel Imam" by the mujahideen as he was instrumental in
helping raise the Taliban militia and he trained present Taliban leader Mullah
Omar and other top Afghan leaders, including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the slain
Northern Alliance leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud. "Colonel Imam" is widely referred
to as the "Father of the Taliban."
The three men have not been heard from since March 25.
Soon after their disappearance, Punjabi militants calling themselves the "Asian
Tigers" sent a video to the media in which they demanded a ransom of US$10
million for the release of Asad Qureshi and the freedom of Taliban leaders
Mullah Baradar and Mansoor Dadullah in exchange for Khawaja and Colonel Imam.
The Afghan Taliban have distanced themselves from the kidnappings and their
spokesman Zabiullah Muhajahid said they were working for the release of the
two.
In the video footage, Khawaja confesses to a scheme to bring down the radical
movement that had become centered around Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in the
capital, Islamabad. By mid-2007, the movement had become increasingly
aggressive. Students from nearby educational faculties had taken to the streets
to persuade video shops not to sell "vulgar" movies. The campaign took a turn
for the worse when the students seized a suspected brothel owner in the Aapara
area, where both the Taliban-supporting Lal Masjid and the ISI were situated.
Khawaja says he hatched a plan with Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the chief of the
Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (the largest Islamic party in the country), the Gand
Mufti of Pakistan, Mufti Rafi Usmani, and other scholars to eliminate the Lal
Masjid movement from Islamabad.
Khawaja says he trapped Maulana Abdul Aziz, the prayer leader of the mosque and
the brother of Ghazi Abdul Rasheed, with whom Aziz ran Lal Masjid.
Khawaja says he telephoned Aziz and lured him into being arrested. Rasheed was
killed in the military raid on the mosque in which scores of militants also
died.
"I am known among the media and masses as a thoroughbred gentleman, but in fact
I was an ISI and CIA [US Central Intelligence Agency] mole ... I am remembering
the burnt bodies of the innocent boys and girls of Lal Masjid ... I called
Maulana Abdul Aziz and forced him to come out of the mosque wearing a woman's
veil and gown, and that's how I got him arrested," Khawaja says in one of the
video clips.
The Lal Masjid incident proved a defining moment in Pakistan's recent history:
it culminated in the decline of president Pervez Musharraf, who stepped down in
August 2008, and provoked a fierce reaction among militants against the
Pakistani state.
Khawaja says that top jihadi commanders were the ISI's proxies and were given a
free hand to collect funds. The leaders included Maulana Fazlur Rahman Khalil
(who laid the foundations of the International Islamic Front with bin Laden in
1998), Maulana Masood Azhar (chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammad), Abdullah Shah
Mazhar (a former supreme commander of the Jaish-e-Mohammad.)
"I brought here a list of 14 commanders and was aiming to malign them among
militant circles ... Abdullah Shah Mazhar, Fazlur Rahman Khalil, Masood Azhar
and jihadi organizations like Laskhar-e-Taiba, al-Badr, Jaish-e-Mohammad,
Harkatul Mujahideen, Jamiatul Mujahideen etc operate with the financial
cooperation of the Pakistani secret services and they are allowed collect their
funds inside Pakistan," Khawaja says in the video.
Khawaja was arrested immediately after the Lal Masjid operation and spent
several months in jail. He had been involved in talks with the government to
prevent the military from moving into the mosque and he had assured the
government that he would resolve the matter without force. However, the
government intercepted some of his messages in which he apparently urged those
inside the mosque not to surrender and he was arrested as a collaborator with
the Lal Masjid.
He was a known critic of the role of the Pakistani Intelligence agencies after
September 11, 2001, when Pakistan sided with the US in the "war on terror".
He was one of the few prominent people to openly provide assistance to
Arab-Afghan families whose male members had been arrested or killed during the
US invasion on Afghanistan in 2001.
At the time of his disappearance, Khawaja was working for the cause of missing
people - mostly militants. But because of his past links to the air force and
the ISI, he has always been viewed with some suspicion by al-Qaeda.
Khawaja was retired from the air force in the late 1980s after he wrote a
letter to the then-president, General Zia ul-Haq, in which he called him a
hypocrite for not enforcing Islam in Pakistan. He then went to Afghanistan and
fought alongside bin Laden. He was a recruiter and trainer of Pakistani
fighters for the resistance against the Soviets.
Khawaja's name hit the headlines again in February 2002 in connection with the
kidnapping, torture and murder by militants of American reporter Daniel Pearl.
It was alleged that he was involved in the abduction at the behest of the ISI.
Khawaja gave several interviews to Asia Times Online in which he revealed how
he had set up a meeting in Saudi Arabia in the late 1980s between bin Laden and
then leader of the opposition, Nawaz Sharif, to dislodge Benazir Bhutto's
government. Her government fell in 1990 and Sharif became premier. Khawaja also
revealed that in the late 1980s he passed on funds from bin Laden to a former
Pakistani minister, Sheikh Rasheed, for the operation of training camps for
Kashmiri separatists.
It is unclear why Khawaja took Colonel Imam with him to North Waziristan. In
the video footage, Khawaja says, "I was sent by the Pakistan army in North
Waziristan because the army was badly caught in the middle of a conflict and
was unable come out. I was sent to get reconciliation between the army and the
militants so that the militants would give safe passage to the military to
leave the area."
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can
be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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