Friday, March 07, 2003

Asia Times has an article looking at Khalid Sheik Mohammed's arrest. There is some interesting stuff there.

He was actually captured on September 11, 2002, but the Pakistani authorities had shown him as captured on March 1 this year in order to soften any US anger due to their ambivalent stand on the Iraq issue. This did not stand scrutiny. If this was really so, the Pakistanis would have stage-managed a raid at some other place near the Pakistan-Afghan border and shown him as arrested there. They would not have shown him as arrested in Rawalpindi in an area where many serving and retired officers of the army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) live, which was bound to create a suspicion in the minds of the Americans about the complicity of military officials with Khalid.

Not a comforting thing, that.

While the dregs of the Taliban have taken shelter in the tribal areas of Balochistan, North-West Frontier Province and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas, those of al-Qaeda have spread out into the urban areas of Sindh and Punjab. Pakistani components of the IIF have taken shelter in Karachi, Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir and the Northern Areas.

The complicity of the JEI with al-Qaeda should be a matter of concern. Of all the Islamic political parties in Pakistan, the JEI has always been the most favored by the military-intelligence establishment. Its leaders are perceived in Pakistan as the army's blue-eyed mullahs. While maintaining an overtly anti-establishment line, it has always covertly collaborated with the army and the ISI. Many Pakistani army officers and nuclear scientists gravitate towards the JEI after their retirement.

Worrisome examples are those of Lieutenant-General Hameed Gul and Lieutenant-General Javed Nasir, both former directors-general of the ISI, and A Q Khan, the "father" of the Pakistani atomic bomb. It is likely that the women's wing leader of the JEI gave shelter to Khalid at the instance of such retired officers who have been helping al-Qaeda and the Taliban escape decimation by the Americans. The JEI's nexus with al-Qaeda is the tip of the iceberg of the nexus with the terrorists of at least some sections of the army.

< email | 3/07/2003 02:32:00 PM | link