HOuse where perp was caught. Nice cave, eh?
Posted on 08/03/2004 7:15:19 PM PDT by JimBr
Pakistan produces the goods, again By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - When US Central Command commander General John Abizaid visited Islamabad last week, his first priority was not Pakistan sending troops to Iraq, but the arrest of high-value al-Qaeda targets.
Almost magically, just days later, a Tanzanian al-Qaeda operative, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, was arrested in the Punjab provincial city of Gujrat. He is wanted in the United States in connection with the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. He was one of the United States' 22 most-wanted terrorists, and had a US$5 million bounty on his head.
Security experts close to the corridors of power in Pakistan tell Asia Times Online that as the November presidential elections in the US draw closer, more such dramatic - and timely - arrests can be expected. The announcement of Ghailani's arrest coincided with the Democratic Party's convention in Boston during which John Kerry was confirmed as challenger to President George W Bush.
According to the experts, Abizaid met with all top Pakistani officials and discussed plans to broaden the net for the arrest of foreigners in Pakistan from South Waziristan to all of the other six tribal agencies, as well as to the southwestern province of Balochistan.
The Pakistan army has launched two major offensives in South Waziristan this year in an attempt to capture foreign militants, managing only to stir resentment from the local tribespeople.
Already, though, under intense pressure from the US, Pakistan has handed over as many as 350 suspected al-Qaeda operators into US custody. Most have been low-ranking, but some important names are, according to Asia Times Online contacts, being held in Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) safe houses to be presented at the right moment.
The contacts say that Pakistan's strategic circles see the high-value al-Qaeda operators as "bargaining chips" to ensure continued US support for President General Pervez Musharraf's de facto military rule in Pakistan. Had Pakistan handed over top targets such as Osama bin Laden, his deputy Dr Aiman al-Zawahir, Tahir Yuldash (leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan) and others - assuming it was in a position to do so - the military rulers would have lost their usefulness to the US in its "war on terror".
Information accessed by Asia Times Online traces the arrest of Ghailani to the earlier apprehension of one Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, alias Abu Talha. Khan, a computer engineer in his mid-20s, was arrested in Lahore. He had been wanted for some time and was thought to have been hiding in South Waziristan.
Documents, computers and reports allegedly uncovered in Khan's arrest led US officials this week to warn against a possible al-Qaeda attack against financial institutions in the US. However, subsequently some analysts in the US have claimed that much of the information that resulted from the arrest was compiled before the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser, said Monday in an interview on PBS that surveillance reports apparently collected by al-Qaeda operatives had been "gathered in 2000 and 2001". But she added that information may have been updated as recently as January.
As one observer in Karachi commented, "Every second jihadi I know has a computer and is always busy checking information on buildings in the US - their height and width and their possible vulnerable areas - and it is their routine practice to make plans with computer graphics to bring down US buildings to the ground."
Nevertheless, in response to the perceived threat, US authorities have launched a huge search for terrorist operatives who might have helped conduct surveillance of the five main financial institutions in New York City, Newark, and Washington - Citigroup, the New York Stock Exchange, Prudential, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
According to news reports, tens of thousands of delivery records to the buildings in question will be scrutinized. Investigators also will question those who have had access to the architectural plans of the institutions' largest buildings, and former employees.
Khan, from Karachi, initially belonged to the banned Jaish-i-Mohammed, a militant outfit fighting in Kashmir. As a Jaish member, he went to Afghanistan during the Taliban period (1996-2001), where he acquired extensive military training in Arab camps and became acquainted with several prominent Arab fighters. He also met Amjad Hussain Farooqui, a member of the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, a banned group of sectarian assassins who target Shi'ite Muslims. At this point Khan entered the underworld.
After the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, many foreign al-Qaeda members such as Ghailani fled to Pakistan's tribal areas, where they either made their way on to their home countries or decided to stay.
Ghailani ended up in South Waziristan, where he remained, but in the face of the two Pakistan army operations there, he was forced to flee, and with the help of Khan and others ended up in Gujrat. Khan's attempts to contact a travel agent in Lahore to smuggle Ghailani and his family out of the country apparently led to his arrest - his satellite telephone calls were intercepted by intelligence agencies. After two weeks of interrogation, Khan pointed the way to Ghailani's hideout.
The next 'target'?
Dr Aafia Siddiqui, in her mid-30s, has a PhD in neurological sciences from the US. She is believed to have Pakistani and US nationality. She is wanted by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as an "al-Qaeda operative and facilitator" and in connection with "possible terrorist threats" in the US. September 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (caught in Pakistan) is believed to have told authorities about Aafia.
She disappeared, with her three children, a few months ago in Pakistan. Asia Times Online sources claim that she is in the custody of the ISI. All calls by her family and humanitarian groups for her to be produced in court have been ignored.
Acquaintances of Aafia say she was an ISI contact and played an active role as a "relief worker" in Chechnya and Bosnia - a role the government now does not want to reveal. She has also been connected with different Arab non-governmental organizations in the US, through which she also helped to supply aid and funds to Chechens.
However Aafia's case turns out, doubtless a number of al-Qaeda operators are already in detention in Pakistan to be produced when and as necessary.
Really kind of a good thing that the alqaeda folk are just hanging out in Wackystan or wherever just waiting to be picked up by Musharraf to further Bush's diabolical schemes. Amazing.
I'm not sure that the article/report says that Bush is aware of this or is orchestrating any of this stuff. I have been a lifelong Republican and I would never even accuse a Democrat President of folling around with this type of stuff, let alone Dubya.
The thing here is that Musharraf is playing us like a fiddle.
1- For years, pakistan said it had no al qaeda on it's soil, yet each time we pressured them, they came up with arrests out of virtually no-where to prove that alqaeda were always there.
The pakis wouldn't have been able to come up with alqaeda arrests in hours, unless they knew all along, where these al qaeda people were hiding.
2- As far as bin laden and others are concerned, pakistan is getting billions of dollars a year for the war on terror
They are going to continue to shelter bin laden and milk every drop out of the US, before they hand him over.
3- the pakis have so many skeletons in their closet, that in my opinion, they are never going to give up bin laden, instead they are going to hold onto him, so that we continue to need them.
Spot on.
This guy Ghailani is a black man who managed to live for 6 years in a country where no one remotely looks like him. They caught him in a densely populated industrial town.
As to UBL, they might kill him and then hand over his body, to make sure that he doesn't talk.
That might happen after they get $$$ from us.
HOuse where perp was caught. Nice cave, eh?
is this where the african guy was caught?
i am not really sure, but the islamization drive in pakistan is reported to have lasted from the 80's right till this day.
this would mean that the islamists control not only the power, but most of the wealth as well.
we have been buying islamic lies for the past two decades.
We have bought so much of their lies, that now they sell us nothing but lies.
They have put us on such a strong staple of lies, that we wouldn't be able to survive, if they stopped.
American linguists as translators is crucial to any major intelligence re-organization.
We don't want the muslims to paint the islamic world for us with their lies. we need to see the islamic world with our eyes and ears.
This islamic terror is directed against america. We are the victims of this islamic terror. We suffer the consequences of this terror
yet we have been mere spectators in this war that is run solely by muslims;
islamic terrorists attack us, while muslims in western intelligence, capitalize on those terror attacks by formulating a policy to give max concessions to the muslims.
we are silent spectators in this war waged against us, the consequences of which are borne solely by us.
I read a report which says that (private) Saudis alone send $500 million a year to Pakistani Islamists. No wonder they can afford such places
We could force the saudis to stop the funding.
but,it's difficult to destroy islamic businesses that sustain the terrorists.
In a country with 140 million muslims, where most of the businesses are run by the islamists, how can you stop the businesses, short of sanctions.
the islamists have been creeping into pakistan, afghanistan, iran and saudi arabia's political and economic landscape for decades now.
Short of a break up of these countries into small states carved along ethnic lines to replace the islamic sentiment with ethnic sentiment similar to that of the kurds, i see no solution to this problem.
The kurds care more about their kurdish ethnicity than about their iraqi nationality or islamic religion.. This is what needs to be done to the rest of the islamic world.
the small size would also rob them of the means to pursue wmds, sponsor terror or field huge armies. Small states can also be easily manipulated through international trade and other levers, as they are more dependent on the world outside.
That does make sense -- P{akistan and afgh should be split up into a number of states
Your source for that? The only thing this guy has to gain is maybe a quick death instead of a video taped beheading.
Your source for that? The only thing this guy has to gain is maybe a quick death instead of a video taped beheading.I don't think Musharraf is sitting in his palace plotting ways to screw us. The thing is that he would like to give us the Arab terrorists while keeping his local jihadists and their supporters in his army intact. The problem is that the terrorists don't see any difference between jihad against Americans and Indians or Afghans. Just because some groups have targeted Musharraf in the past does not mean that he cannot or will not reach some sort of arrangement with them. In any case, Musharraf's actions have shown that he has the ability to miraculously produce a "top" Al Qaeda figure every time the pressure on him gets beyond a particular point.
well splitting up yugoslavia brought peace to the balkans.
splitting up pakistan, iran, and saudi arabia would again replace the islamic sentiment with a strong ethnic sentiment like that of the kurds.
the new states would be too small to field huge armies, they wouldn't have the infrastructure or the resources to pursue WMD, and they wouldn't have the islamic sentiment to be worried about causes in other parts of the world
Since their sentiment would be purely ethnic, they would only worry about their own small ethnicity like the kurds.
They wouldnt worry about iraq, palestine, chechenya or any other place.
and this would put an end to islamic terror and pan islamism for good.
Russia, india, serbia and israel have all been ravaged by islamic terror. We could get these countries to contribute troops to the operations.
we should further appoint a non-muslim regional policemen for every group of hostile islamic countries. this role could be taken up by russia, india, greece, phillipines etc to enforce our policies on islamic countries in their region, since we can't be fighting wars in every country.
we could also bring up african states and latin america as a bloc to contain the expansionist sentiment of the islamic world.
musharraf is doing just enough to keep the pressure off without seriously damaging the terror network.
he hasn't come up with any long term measures like shutting down islamic school that churn out thousands or terrorists a year or even outlaw parties like jamiati islami
His few odd al qaeda arrests are more than adequately compensated by the thousands of new jihadis coming out of islamic schools.
He is trying to fight international pressure, yet retain the potential to wage terror, possibly nuclear terror against the US in the future.
He is hurriedly building up his missile fleet, once he gets that fleet up, he is going to tell us to go to hell.
We need to get the iranian and paki nukes before they put them on the missiles.
I was kidding, silly! This art makes out that Musharraf is going out in the terrorist garden and picking these folks off as needed to support Bush's reelection, as if the terrorists are therefore willingly hanging out as easy targets for the making. As if.
>>is this where the african guy was caught?
Yes.
www.satribune.com is worth checking for Pakistani intrigues.
>>any long term measures like shutting down islamic school that churn out thousands
They're still cooking. The money provided by the US is going into their coffers.
Funny, but the US is financing the very sources of hatred that create jihadis to attack nonjihadis everywhere.
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