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Pak busts Al-Qaeda plot : Musharraf, US Embassy the targets |
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Pakistan claims to have busted a dramatic plot by an Al-Qaeda linked group of terrorists to launch suicide attacks on key government leaders and the US Embassy earlier this month. As many as 11 to 12 suspects, one Egyptian and others Pakistanis, have been arrested in connection with the plot. Pakistan intelligence is also on the look out for a Libyan national, Abu Faraj Farj, 30, who is suspected to be the mastermind behind the two attempts on the life of Gen. Musharraf.
The information of latest arrests was given by the two Pakistani Ministers, the high-profile Information Minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, and the Interior Minister, Faisal Saleh Hayyat. Rashid Ahmed told newsmen on Aug 22 that a terrorist group had planned attacks on key installations in the capital and the neighbouring garrison city of Rawalpindi. Among the targets, he said, were the official residence of President Musharraf, Prime Minister’s House, a convention centre, Parliament building, the US Embassy and the headquarters of the Army. He said that security agencies had seized a huge cache of arms and ammunition, including dozens of bombs, grenades, rocket launchers and detonators. Saleh Hayyat on the other hand said the intelligence agencies who made the arrests between August 10 and 15, had found suicide belts and other material that could be used in such an attack. He said, they were linked to the Al-Qaeda and wanted to kill important personalities, including Gen. Musharraf and government ministers. They wanted to destabilize Pakistan, create unrest and weaken the country, he alleged. He disclosed that four of those arrested were planners. Among them were the Egyptian, Sheikh Isa alias Qari Ismail.
Musharraf, on the other hand, has said that a Libyan national has been identified to be the man who masterminded two attempts on him last December. In an interview to the TIME magazine, he identified him as Abu Faraj Farj, 30. He is believed to have replaced Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as Al-Qaeda’s chief of operations, who was captured by Pakistan in March last year and extradited to the United States. According to US officials, Farj has taken over much of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s role: Devising plans for terrorist attacks inside the United States and directing Al-Qaeda agents and helpers to that end.
Since mid-July, Pakistan has burnished its reputation as a key ally in the US-led war on terrorism, claiming the arrest of more than 60 terror suspects, including some key Al-Qaeda operatives. Musharraf has engaged Islamic hardliners by abandoning Pakistan’s alliance with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. In recent months, he and other Pakistani leaders have been targeted in a series of deadly attacks authorities suspect were masterminded by the Al-Qaeda. Two bombings against Gen. Musharraf in Rawalpindi in December killed 17 people and a suicide attack against Shaukat Aziz (who took over as Prime Minister on August 28) in a town near Islamabad on July 3- left nine more dead. Both leaders escaped injury. Terrorists have also attacked Western targets. In June 2002, a suicide car bombing outside the US consulate in the volatile southern city of Karachi killed 14 Pakistanis. In March 2002, grenades thrown at worshippers at a church near the US Embassy in Islamabad killed five people. But, in the past five weeks, investigators have enjoyed a run of success, nabbing dozens of suspects since the July 13 capture of an alleged Al-Qaeda computer expert, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan. He led them to other suspects, most notably a Tanzanian, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who is wanted for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa that killed more than 200 people.
Now, the latest worry of neighbouring Afghanistan is that the Taliban elements hiding in Pakistan may try to sabotage the October Presidential elections. President Hamid Karzai’s complaint is that the Musharraf Government is not cracking down on the Taliban elements as much as it is doing against Al-Qaeda under US pressure. President Karzai paid a visit to Islamabad beginning August 24 to discuss with President Musharraf cooperation in the battle against Islamic militants ahead of his October re-election bid. During his two-day visit, which came less than two months before the October 6 elections, he sought Pakistan’s assurance that it will do all it can to prevent the terrorists from infiltrating into Afghanistan to disrupt voting. Gen. Musharraf has said his government would not allow Islamic militants based in Pakistan to disrupt the Afghan elections from its soil. But the US seems to have issued him a public warning that it does not believe he is doing enough. Three Western diplomats in an article in the NEW YORK TIMES, have accused Pakistan of serving as a sanctuary for Afghan militants. “They are training, financing and organizing these operations on Pakistani soil”, said a Western diplomat in Kabul. “There is evidence from people who have been picked up in Afghanistan that they are receiving training in Pakistan”, he said. The three diplomats quoted intelligence reports to the effect that Taliban militants operating from their Pakistani bases planned to disrupt the elections and warned Pakistan to rein in Taliban operations immediately. Otherwise any responsibility, if the attacks take place, would have to be shared by Islamabad. The diplomats said Taliban operations in Pakistan, particularly in Baluchistan, were so extensive that the ISI “must be aware of it”. The present US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, has in the past publicly accused Pakistan of harbouring Taliban members.
The NEW YORK TIMES article has said that in recent months, a debate has gone on inside the Bush Administration over how much to press Gen. Musharraf on the Taliban issue because Pakistan’s efforts against the Taliban were not equal to its assault on the Al-Qaeda.
Taliban have now threatened to kill US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and vowed “a flood of jihad” against Americans. In a statement posted on their website, they told Rumsfeld: “You may have escaped unharmed from our swords, but you will not escape again”. The statement from the so-called Information Office of the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” also promised a flood of jihad against Americans and their allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The US which is worried over the possibility of some Pakistanis living illegally in that country having developed links with the Al-Qaeda has launched a campaign to find out those Pakistanis violating immigration laws and deport them back to Pakistan. A Press report says that the US has detained and repatriated some 600 Pakistanis between June 2002 and April 2004. Sixty four left for home on Aug 26.
The US has reason to be worried of late. The Republican Convention ahead of President Bush’s re-election bid in the November poll is due to take place in New York where security is the tightest in view of fears that the Al-Qaeda may try to carry out the terrorist attacks to mark its presence there. Earlier, the Democratic Convention took under the shadow of similar terrorist attacks and the arrest of a high-profile Al-Qaeda suspect, a computer wizard of the outfit, Muhammed Naeem Noor Khan, revealed that the Al-Qaeda had carried out surveillance and dry runs of many financial institutions in Washington, New York and New Jersey to truck bomb them. To quote the White House Security Adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend: “The surveillance reports by Al-Qaeda men in the US appeared to have been gathered in the year 2000 and 2001. But it may have also been updated till this January”. This has been termed alarming which prompted the Homeland Security chief, Tom Ridge, to raise the security threat warning to “orange”.
Last week, the Russians had a taste of terrorism when two passenger planes exploded shortly after they took off from Moscow airport, killing nearly 90 people. The search of the wreckage of the plane revealed traces of explosives leading to the theory that the Chechen rebels, who are widely believed to have links with the Al-Qaeda may have been behind the explosion on the eve of the elections in Chechnya. Only a few months ago, the pro-Moscow President of Chechnya was assassinated when a rally he was addressing was bombed.
The commission that investigated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the US has alleged in a new report that the Al-Qaeda runs a clandestine travel service, possibly partnered with human traffickers south of the US border which helps move its terrorists around the world. Determined to send its agents all around the world, the Al-Qaeda put a premium on creating false travel documents and identity cards, according to the report.
Referring to the recent arrest of Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and the full-throated advertisement of their arrests by Pakistan leaders, political observers say apparently on the eve of President Bush’s bid for re-election, Gen. Musharraf is eager to take credit for his cooperation in the US-led war against terrorism and ensure that Bush’s war against terror gets more credibility. As remarked by a Pakistani commentator, Husain Haqqani, the latest presence of an Al-Qaeda presence in Pakistan is quite contrary to the earlier approach of the Musharraf regime which was to deny any links between Pakistani Islamist militants and the global terrorist network. Haqaani says the fact is that during the anti-Soviet resistance, militants from all over the Muslim world passed through Pakistan to participate in the Afghan jihad. They were, at the time, supported by the intelligence services of the West as well as Islamic nations. Some of them created covert networks within Pakistan, taking advantage of poor law enforcement and the State’s sympathetic attitude towards pan-Islamic militancy. Now that the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban have been uprooted from Afghanistan, they are using their former transit station as a temporary staging ground for terrorist operations. Haqqani says Pakistan’s support to Kashmiri terrorists is an embarrassment Gen. Musharraf must now face. The fear of being seen to back Kashmiri militants has led to Pakistani denials about any Al-Qaeda presence in Pakistan. But, having made an irreversible commitment to opposing the extremists, Gen. Musharraf no longer needs to deny that terrorists hiding in its cities pose a threat to Pakistan and the world.
The high-level publicity given to the recent arrests has led to questions about Musharraf’s intentions in domestic politics. The General had promised to take off his military uniform by the end of the year and the Americans were hoping to use that as a fig leaf for accepting his regime as having completed its transition to civilian, democratic rule. If Musharraf does not want to relinquish charge as Chief of Army Staff, he needs to demonstrate his indispensability in the war against terrorism with renewed vigour. That way he might be able to avert the criticism that is certain to come his way for breaking his promises on giving up his uniform.
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