Author: SAT Report
Publication: South Asia Tribune
Date: February 10, 2005
URL: http://www.satribune.com/archives/200502/P1_deal.htm
Pakistan Army has publicly admitted
paying Al Qaeda over half a million dollars in the most bizarre deal it
has ever made with militant Waziristan fighters, battling the Army and
the US forces in the rugged terrain bordering Afghanistan for months .
The announcement of the payment
was made in Peshawar by none other than the Corps Commander of Peshawar
Corps, the man incharge of military operations in Waziristan, Lt Gen Safdar
Hussain, who said Rs32 million (US$540,000) had been paid to to help four
former wanted tribal militants in South Waziristan "to settle debts with
al-Qaeda."
General Hussain said the the payments
were part of a peace deal signed on Monday with tribesmen, but the public
admission that money had been paid to be transferred to Al Qaeda stunned
analysts and diplomatic observers in Islamabad.
But the main militant rebel, an
ex-Guantanamo Bay prisoner who was released some time back, refused to
accept the deal.
According to The Daily Times, which
the deal with Baitullah Mehsud was negotiated by anti-US religious political
leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman of JUI-MMA who had been a stronger sponsor
and supporter of the Taliban. The "peace deal" ceremony ended with shouts
of "Death to America", The Daily Times reported.
According to BBC Gen Hussain said
four former wanted militants had insisted they needed the money to pay
back huge sums to al-Qaeda. Haji Sharif and Maulvi Abbas received Rs15
million each, while Maulvi Javed and Haji Mohammad Omar were each paid
one million rupees.
Gen Hussain said a sum of Rs20 million
rupees was also offered to tribal leader, Baitullah Mehsud, who signed
the peace deal, but that he rejected it. The commander said the militants
had initially sought Rs170 million.
The peace deal offers an amnesty
in return for the tribe's pledge not to support al-Qaeda and Tale ban militants
or attack government installations.
Editorially criticizing the deal,
Daily Times said It sounded very much like the "peace" ceremony last year
with Nek Muhammad, the Wazir "Taliban commander" with Al Qaeda connections;
only on that occasion high-ranking Pakistani military officers were present
and there were speeches against America's "invasion" of Afghanistan to
appease the Wazir jirga. This time the domination of the ceremony by JUI
was obvious. A tribal representative found occasion to appeal to China
to "forgive" the murder by Abdullah Mehsud and his terrorists of a Chinese
engineer working at the Gomal Zam Dam kidnapped by them and held for blackmail.
The "appeal" to China has been published
in the national press. Backed by the MMA, it will be accepted as a ridiculous
application of the law of tribal "honor" on a foreign country. China is
thus supposed to redeem its honor by forgiving a terrorist who has been
an inmate at the Guantanamo Bay prison, providing justification to a dubious
judicial enterprise by America.
The Times asked: "But where is the
honor of the government of Pakistan and how has it redeemed it in the long
drawn out "war with Al Qaeda" in the Tribal Areas? The "deal" with Nek
Muhammad fell through before the ink was dry on it and the man had finally
to be killed with a missile, but not before he became a 'hero' of sorts
despite his not so honorable personal profile in the area where he operated.
It said: "The fact is that the government
has little public credibility on its "Wana Operation". Equally, the religious
parties are in denial and still maintain that there are no "foreign" terrorists
in South Waziristan except those that came in the 1980s and settled down.
Also, the ARD parties have opposed the "operation" and linked it to the
"operation" in Balochistan and accused Islamabad of taking dictation from
America against its own people. The corps commander and the governor in
Peshawar handle the "operation" in South Waziristan, but they must be aware
that the PR side of what they have done has not worked at all. The result
is that President Pervez Musharraf has also lost support among the community
of retired generals who usually back him.
The media's registration of the
strategy of the Wana "operation" is interesting too. Quoted in the press,
the Peshawar corps commander said on February 7, 2005 that the operation
in Wana had killed over 150 "foreign terrorists" and a large number of
them had been arrested. He said there were still around 100 at large. In
March 2004 there were 600-700 of them there. He said the survivors had
fled in groups of four and were spread around in the country. There were
70,000 Pakistani troops deployed in South Waziristan while there were only
18,000 allied and Afghan forces on the Afghan side of the border. He said
he had ordered 44 operations in one year. One might ask: why was he not
able to show the "large number" of foreign terrorists, captured or dead,
to the media? Did he not know that the Wana Operation had no political
credibility? Why did he ignore the first lesson in such operations: establishing
credibility among the public?
"We fear that the truth might turn
out to show the latest peace deal as another dead-on-arrival achievement
of the government. The JUI has got its Banuri Masjid graduate Abdullah
Mehsud off the hook without surrendering a single killer. If the troops
go after him now, Baitullah Mehsud will call it a breach of faith and declare
war once again, just like Nek Muhammad did. Meanwhile, the Wazirs have
not appreciated the "deal" with the Mehsud jirga and have killed two journalists
who were returning from the peace ceremony. Both the journalists were Wazirs:
hence the tribal disapproval of "joining in with the enemy". Therefore
if "peace" with Baitullah Mehsud was a tactic of relieving the mounting
pressure from Balochistan, it may turn out to be another dud," the Daily
Times said
As predicted by the Daily Times,
on Wednesday tribal militant Abdullah Mehsud, wanted for kidnapping two
Chinese engineers last year, told the BBC he did not support the deal signed
by Baitullah Mehsud. He said only a holy war would evict "US agents" from
Pakistan.
Abdullah Mehsud speaking to the
BBC's Haroon Rashid in Peshawar by phone from an undisclosed location,
said: "Baitullah's thinking might be that he can achieve his aims by signing
the peace agreement, while mine is that only a holy war against the US
and Pakistani government could achieve this."
Abdullah Mehsud spent about two
years in US custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, before being released. He
fought for the Tale ban in Afghanistan, losing a leg in a landmine explosion
a few days before the Tale ban took Kabul in September 1996. He is wanted
for masterminding the abduction of two Chinese engineers in South Waziristan
last year, one of whom was killed in a rescue attempt.
The incident was highly embarrassing
for the Pakistani government, which has close ties with Beijing. Abdullah
Mehsud, condemning those who appealed to China to grant him amnesty, accused
Beijing of killing Muslims.
Shortly after Monday's accord, two
journalists who attended the signing were killed when gunmen opened fire
on their vehicle in Wana. Abdullah Mehsud said on Wednesday: "My people
are not responsible for the killing of the two journalists." Pakistan believes
hundreds of militants, including Arabs, Afghans and Central Asians, are
holed up in the South Waziristan region.
Abdullah Mehsud, the commander of
the Islamic militants who kidnapped two Chinese engineers in Pakistan's
South Waziristan region, spent 25 months in custody at the US base in Guantanamo
Bay before his release in March.
According to well known Peshawar
journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai, as a young man, Mehsud, now 29, fought
for the Tale ban against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. He lost
a leg in a landmine explosion a few days before the Tale ban took Kabul
in September 1996. He surrendered along with several thousand fighters
to the forces of Uzbek warlord, Abdul Rashid Dostum, in December 2001 in
Kunduz, northern Afghanistan, and was later turned over to the US military
authorities.
Mehsud studied at a government college
in Peshawar before attending a seminary where he befriended Afghan Tale
ban members and joined their movement. Mehsud, whose real name is Noor
Alam, is a Pashtun, the same ethnic group as the Tale ban and belongs to
the Mehsud tribe that inhabits South Waziristan on the Afghanistan border.
Mehsud has declared holy war on President Musharraf. His long hair and
daredevil nature has made him a colorful character.
Since his return from Guantanamo
Bay, Mehsud has become a hero to anti-US fighters active in both Afghanistan
and Pakistan. He was a comrade of another tribal militant commander, Nek
Mohammad, who was killed by a Pakistani army missile in June.
Mehsud sometimes rides a camel or
horse while visiting his fighters in his mountainous abode. On other occasions,
his men drive him in a vehicle and protect him round-the-clock. In a recent
telephone interview with the BBC, Mehsud said he led his fighters by example
by taking risks and surviving in tough conditions.
Criticizing US policies toward Muslims,
he said the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan was a provocation
for the followers of Islam and must be avenged. He said he did not want
to fight the Pakistan army but had declared jihad, or holy war, against
the government of President Pervez Musharraf, who he accused of carrying
out US policies in the region.
