Author: A Chalomumbai Correspondent
Publication: Mid-Day
Date: June 17, 2002
URL: http://www.chalomumbai.com/asp/article.asp?cat_id=29&art_id=25740&cat_code=2F574841545F535F4F4E5F4D554D4241492F5441415A415F4B4841424152
Pakistan has become a new hub for
al-Qaeda operatives with hundreds of them moving freely and forming or
renewing alliances with local extremist networks. Pakistan has replaced
Afghanistan as command-and-control centre for at least some of the battered
remnants of Osama bin Laden's terrorist army have received help from local
extremist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed in form of safe
houses for communications, training and logistics, Los Angeles times said
quoting US intelligence sources.
A Pakistani official quoted by the
paper said his government estimates that at least several hundred al-Qaeda
fighters slipped into Pakistan's 10 tribal territories - mostly in the
so-called Pushtun belt that runs from Quetta to north of Peshawar--last
winter. But they were exposed to U.S. Satellites and other forces in the
open desert, he said, and the cities seemed far safer. US intelligence
analysts still believe that al-Qaeda chief bin Laden and his top aides
have found refuge somewhere along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. Broad
pockets of local sympathisers exist in the semi-autonomous tribal areas
of Baluchistan and north-west frontier province, they say.
''They don't operate with impunity
there like they did in Afghanistan but they have lots of supporters, and
it's easy for them to blend in,'' the sources said. A justice department
official quoted by the paper said al-Qaeda members appear to have gone
''wherever they want'' in Pakistan.
Al-Qaeda leaders and followers have
been arrested or tracked innearly every major Pakistani city, including
Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad, Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The sources
say that al-Qaeda has made similar efforts to regroup by merging with local
Muslim extremist groups in Africa, the middle east and southeast Asia.
These makeshift alliances are more
decentralized than the network long directed by bin Laden, officials say,
and thus might be more difficult for outsiders to penetrate. Since September
11 attacks more than a dozen terrorist plots have ben foiled around the
world and more than 2,400 suspects arrested in nearly 90 countries but
more than half of al-Qaeda's known leaders remain at large, including several
linked to the September 11 assaults and other major attacks.
Officials are especially eager to
catch Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, an al-Qaeda operative linked to almost every
attack against the United States since the bombing of the World Trade Center
in 1993.
In some cases, U.S. officials say,
even some members of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) openly supported
al-Qaeda and have used an informal underground railroad to help fleeing
terrorists.
''The ISI is filled with extremists,
and I don't think they're trying very hard to find these people,'' a recently
retired US counter- terrorism official told the l A Times. ''In fact, they're
actively trying to hide them.'' Arrests elsewhere point to the terrorist
group's spread. Saudi Arabia acknowledged Saturday that three men arrested
in Morocco on suspicion of planning attacks on US and British ships in
the strait of Gibraltar are Saudi citizens. Morocco said they claim to
be al-Qaeda operatives. The attacks would have been similar to the suicide
bombing of the U.S. Destroyer cole in yemen - an operation also linked
to al-Qaeda.
