Kashmiri: Most wanted - dead or
alive By Malik Ayub Sumbal
ISLAMABAD - Doubts persist over whether or
not Ilyas Kashmiri, the head of al-Qaeda's
operational arm, has been killed in a United
States Predator drone strike in Pakistan, with
speculation swirling that reports of his demise
might be a ploy to take the heat off the most
wanted man in the region.
Kashmiri, 46,
the operational commander of the banned
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami militant group and its
313 Brigade, was reported by intelligence
officials in Pakistan on Sunday to have been
killed in a drone attack on Friday in the South
Waziristan Agency tribal area on the border with
Afghanistan.
His body, however, has not
been found, leading to doubts over the
veracity of the claims.
Kashmiri, a highly trained militant who
once served as a commander in the Special Services
Group of the Pakistan army, has previously twice
been reported killed, on 7 and 14 September, 2009.
He is wanted in connection with a number of major
terrorist attacks in Pakistan and India, including
the three-day militant attack on Mumbai in
November 2008 in which 163 people were killed.
Most recently, he is believed to have
masterminded the brazen attack on a naval air base
in the southern port city of Karachi on May 22.
(See Al-Qaeda
had warned of Pakistan strike Asia Times
Online, May 27.)
Kashmiri, the only
Pakistani militant to have risen high into
al-Qaeda's ranks, was appointed "acting chairman"
by Saif Al Adel, the Egyptian chief military
strategist of al-Qaeda who is de facto acting as a
replacement for Osama bin Laden, who was killed by
US Special Forces in Pakistan last month.
Kashmiri is known to have wanted to
reignite conflict between Pakistan and India,
diverting Islamabad's attention from Afghanistan
and the Pakistani tribal areas and preventing
India from playing a strategic role. In February
2010 he wrote to Asia Times Online with a warning
along these lines. (See Al-Qaeda
chief delivers a warning.)
Kashmiri
was born in Pakistani-administered Kashmir in
1964. He lost a finger and an eye during the fight
against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the
1980s. Most photographs show him wearing aviator
sunglasses. He is an expert in guerilla warfare
and notorious for his cunning, honed in the
struggle against the Indian armed forces in
Indian-administered Kashmir.
Syed Saleem
Shahzad, Asia Times Online's Pakistan bureau chief
kidnapped and killed this month in Pakistan, wrote
of Kashmiri:
Ilyas Kashmir was once a hero figure
of the Kashmiri separatist movement, but he fell
from official grace when Islamabad, under
pressure from the United States, wound down
operations in Kashmir and diverted its attention
to the Pakistani tribal areas to fight the
Taliban and al-Qaeda. Ilyas Kashmir was arrested
by the military [in 2003] on concocted charges
of plotting to murder then-president General
Pervez Musharraf in 2003. After being released
he left Kashmir, abandoning the jihad there, and
settled in the North Waziristan tribal area on
the border with Afghanistan. (See The
rise and rise of the neo-Taliban Asia Times
Online, April 2, 2009.)
American
intelligence agencies and top military officials
say that Kashmiri is the most dangerous of men due
to his training skills and commando expertise. The
US has placed a bounty of US$5 million on his head
following the galvanizing effect he has had on the
Taliban in Afghanistan, and labeled him a
"specially designated global terrorist."
Dead or alive? According to two
private Pakistani news channels, Express TV and
Saman TV, a man who called himself Abu Hanzallah
and claimed to be a spokesman for 313 Brigade
confirmed that Kashmiri had been killed. He added
that the group would take revenge against the
Americans.
Video footage received from
unidentified sources aired by private Pakistani
news channels showed the bodies of nine people in
a garden, none of them identifiable. However,
Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik told the
media: "All ground intelligence shows that he is
dead. What I can say is there is a 98% chance he
is dead."
Hameed Ullah Khan, a resident of
South Waziristan, told Asia Times Online he had
heard the news of Kashmiri's death in Ghwakhwa, a
village in the Wana area of South Waziristan, but
added "it would be difficult to confirm at this
stage".
At least 18 militants have been
reported killed in a series of attacks in South
Waziristan by pilotless Central Intelligence
Agency drones following the one in which Kashmiri
is said to have been killed.
Contacts in
the Inter-Service Intelligence of Pakistan told
Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity
that the confirmation received by the Pakistani
media over Kashmiri's death could be a move by
Kashmiri to save his life as he is top of the most
wanted lists of US and Pakistan forces.
Other contacts claim that 14 people were
in the compound targeted by the drone’s missiles
and that five escaped - Kashmiri could have been
one of these. However, the contacts added that
confirmation of the death of most-wanted militants
often takes a couple of weeks for the security
forces and agencies to counter-check.
However, Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf
Raza Gilani said on Monday in Quetta, the capital
of Balochistan province, that the United States
had confirmed the death of Kashmiri. The US
subsequently denied this was the case.
If,
though, Kashmiri is dead, in practical operational
terms, al-Qaeda and its militant associates would
have been dealt a bigger blow than the death of
Bin Laden.
Malik Ayub Sumbal is
a freelance investigative journalist based in
Islamabad, Pakistan. He has worked for more than
eight years for a number of national and
international newspapers, magazines, journals,
wire services and television channels. He can be
contacted at ayubsumbal@gmail.com
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