Posted on 03/20/2004 7:52:15 PM PST by saquin
IN this land of razor-backed mountains where every man carries a gun, Pakistani troops yesterday launched house-to-house searches after days of fierce fighting to establish once and for all whether Osama Bin Laden’s deputy was holed up inside one of the mud-walled forts.
Flying in a Soviet MI-17 helicopter over southern Waziristan, in Pakistan’s borderlands with Afghanistan, it was easy to understand why Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian-born brains behind Al-Qaeda and one of the world’s most wanted men, might have chosen it as a hiding place.
Forts with 3ft thick walls, inside which could be friend or foe, were dotted around steep gorges. Through them run riverbeds that are dry in winter and in summer cause flash floods. Grey dust coats everything, getting into mouths and eyes.
“It’s the most rugged and inhospitable stretch of the border in the whole of the tribal areas,” said Brigadier Ali Khan. He is commander of a brigade of reinforcements sent to the area at the height of five days of battles between Pakistani forces and Al-Qaeda militants which are thought to have killed at least 70 people on both sides.
A Motorola wireless set found on a Chechen militant killed in the first day’s fighting on Tuesday enabled Pakistani forces to discover the frequency used by the fighters, some 400 of whom were thought to be still trapped yesterday.
Hopes that al-Zawahiri was among them were raised when they picked up a message — in Chechen — that said: “The wounded gentleman would need four men to carry him and 11 or 12 to protect him.”
“I would not rule out any possibility, but this message combined with the way they are still showing such fierce resistance makes me believe they must be protecting someone important,” said General Safdar Hussain, the Peshawar corps commander. He had moved his 5,000-man brigade on Thursday to join Frontier Corps and South Waziristan scouts taken by surprise by the resistance they faced.
Safdar said he believed the “gentleman” was hurt while trying to escape in one of three armoured vehicles that had attempted to break through a Pakistani cordon on Tuesday.
Two of the cars were shot at and crashed, but a third escaped in a cloud of dust. Safdar admitted, however, that the injured person might also be Thuraya, an Uzbek leader.
A senior American official involved in the hunt for Bin Laden said that al-Zawahiri may already be dead. According to his version of events, the Egyptian was in the escaping car and was shot by Taskforce 121, the shadowy rapid reaction force comprising special forces and CIA agents that had helped to capture Saddam Hussein last December.
The body, he said, had been retrieved from the wreckage and was undergoing DNA tests to confirm whether it was that of al-Zawahiri. In deference to the US forces’ hosts, any announcement was being delayed to make it look as if it were a Pakistani-run operation, as well as to have time to use any information garnered to capture other fighters.
Members of Taskforce 121 — whose existence is so secret that their area Camp Vance in the main US base of Bagram is a no-go area to all other US military — were moved to the firebase of Shkin last week, on the Afghan border with Pakistan just a few miles from Wana. Their numbers were boosted by bringing some members back from Iraq.
The capture or killing of al-Zawahiri would be an enormous breakthrough in the war on terrorism in a week when the Madrid bombings have left many feeling that it is a losing battle. While Bin Laden is the public face of Al-Qaeda, many consider that the Egyptian surgeon is the organisation’s real mastermind.
Indicted for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, but most notorious for his involvement in planning the September 11 attacks, he has a $25m bounty on his head.
While Pakistani intelligence has been briefing journalists all week that its forces had al-Zawahiri surrounded, both Safdar and General Shaukat Sultan, spokesman for the Pakistani military, admitted that there had been no actual physical sighting of him. It was more a presumption as he had been known to be in the area.
However intelligence officials said they believed the trapped fighters included top Al-Qaeda bodyguards who work only for Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri.
Some 100 people have been taken prisoner. Yesterday a truckload of 40 of them were shown off, blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs. Around half of them were white-bearded old men.
Pakistan said its helicopters had fired on a truck trying to break through the cordon at high speed last night.
Most of the foreign fighters left in the area are believed to be Chechens and Uzbeks, considered by American forces to be the fiercest fighters who will continue until death. Asked about when the operation would be ended, Sultan replied: “The logical conclusion is mission accomplishment, which means the target is destroyed.”
Waziristan is one of seven tribal areas created by the British in the late 19th century as a buffer zone between British India and Afghanistan. The Waziris have always been renowned for their fierceness and were so hostile to outsiders that in the 1930s there were more British troops stationed there than in the rest of the Raj. Part of the Waziris’ Pashtun code of honour is to give shelter to those who ask, even if they have committed a crime — a quality exploited by Al-Qaeda.
Yesterday as Cobra helicopter gunships circled, 2,500 Pakistani soldiers were involved in a sweep-up operation while another 2,500 guarded escape routes.
Inside the forts so far searched, Safdar’s men found trenches, watchtowers and complexes of buildings, even though the area is just across a jagged mountain from the army headquarters in Wana.
Until recently Pakistani forces have hardly dared to enter the area. Locals are resentful of the incursions, which started last October but on nothing like the scale of last week’s operation.
Mohammad Azam Khan, who became political agent six months ago, persuaded tribal elders and religious leaders to betray the fighters. “I tried to convince them that when you give someone shelter, he should obey your laws rather than you being under his thumb,” he said.
Capturing al-Zawahiri would be a coup for George W Bush, who has increased troop levels in Afghanistan by 2,000 to 13,000.
It would also be a triumph for Pakistan’s president, General Pervez Musharraf, and help to cleanse the image of a country besmirched by its role in the sale of nuclear secrets to pariah states.
The terrorists' allies (out in force today) need to be shown once again that we will not falter and we will not fail.
The body, he said, had been retrieved from the wreckage and was undergoing DNA tests to confirm whether it was that of al-Zawahiri. In deference to the US forces’ hosts, any announcement was being delayed to make it look as if it were a Pakistani-run operation, as well as to have time to use any information garnered to capture other fighters.
Bump for luck!
Well, our special ops guys didn't allow an SUV to escape them, that's for sure!
"My fellow Americans...........((THIS IS A FOX NEWS BULLETEN, WE ARE BREAKING AWAY FROM JOHN KERRY TO BRING YOU THIS IMPORTANT NEWS. ZAHIRI HAS BEEN CONFIRMED DEAD. OUR TEAM OF CORORSPONDANTS ARE ON THERE WAY, WE WILL BE TO WALL TO WALL COVERAGE OF THIS DAY'S EVENTS))
LOL! That would be delicious to see! The way Kerry's luck has been going lately, one never knows. I hope they find out we killed the right guy. I hate to pray for something like that....but what the heck!
This story parallels the one told to Bill O'Rielly a few nights ago by Col. Hunt. He said the same thing and that they were awaiting dna tests. -Tom
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