Missile kills Pakistan tribal head

This thread is still alive?

Wow, and still producing a stream of pertinent, but below the radar, information.

We're all too lazy to start a new thread. :-)

UBL is next.

LOL!

http://www.geo.tv/main_files/pakistan.aspx?id=50701

Huge arms cache recovered from S.Waziristan

WANA: Security forces have recovered huge arms cache from two different places in S.Waziristan.

According to government sources, security forces after getting secret information conducted raids on Khushal Khan's houses in Kunigaram, Pir Saeed Rahman and Tangarai.

With the aid of local tribals the security forces recovered huge amount of arms and ammunition from these areas. The recovered ammunition included 3600 kg of dynamite, 408 shells of 82 MM mortars, 426 rounds of 75 MM, 18 shells of rockets and more then 35,000 rounds of 35 different rifles.

However no arrests were made during the operation.

Your post gave me a laugh when you mentioned Baghdad Bob. As I listened to him say that there were no US troops in Baghdad I couldn't believe my ears. Then some freeper had a photo of BB and a marine in the background...what a laugh.

Have you ever seen the famous Baghdad Bob photo of him on a roof in the sandstorm....claiming no US troops in Baghdad......while over his right shoulder in the background is a US tank....chasing a group of Iraqis.

Funny as heck.

darn....I didn't see that one...

I must admit that BBob was good for some laughs, despite the terror that he excused.

More arrests to be expected:
http://paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=84101

US appeal to contact Qaeda operatives in Pak custody rejected

Saturday November 20, 2004 (1511 PST)

ISLAMABAD, November 21 (Online): Pakistan has rejected US Intelligence Authorities appeal to access terrorists Osama Nazir and Naveedul Hassan earlier arrested by Pakistani security forces at Faisalabad and Lahore.

Interior Ministry sources said that US intelligence authorities wanted to access held terrorists but the government rejected the appeal and said that decision regarding US intelligence contacting held terrorists would be taken after the completion of terrorists' investigation.

Meanwhile Joint Investigating team of Law Enforcement Agencies has started investigation from two terrorists.

Sources further said that both the terrorists have been shifted to an undisclosed location, where Joint Investigating team comprising of high level officials of sensitive departments are busy in further investigation from miscreants.

Responsible authorities of National Crises Management Cell of Interior Minister said that arrests of other wanted terrorists in Punjab and Sindh are also possible after the completion of the probe from these two terrorists.

Authorities said that Intelligence agencies would start operation to nab other anti-state elements after investigating the held terrorists

Okay....So now what's up?

Pakistan Ends Bin Laden Search in Border Region

Saturday, November 27, 2004

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The Pakistan army says it's withdrawing troops from the area where Usama bin Laden (search) and a top aide are believed to be hiding.

The withdrawals from the region near the Afghanistan border follow intense military operations by thousands of troops against remnants of bin Laden's Al Qaeda (search) organization and its allies.

The top Pakistan general in the region says the army is removing checkpoints in return for local tribesmen's support against foreign militants. He adds that some Pakistani soldiers will remain nearby.

Although the tribal region is considered a possible hiding place for bin Laden and his deputy, a senior Pakistan general has said there's been no sign of them.

But earlier this month, the deputy commander of U.S. Central Command said it was "essential" that Pakistan continue military operations in the area.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,139760,00.html

Months ago, after the Saddam capture, several generals said OBL would be caught by the end of this year. Maybe OBL moves after this announcement and then is captured/killed.

That sounds optimistic.
It's possible, because they've been making announcements for weeks that they have the area surrounded and he's not there.
I'll keep my fingers crossed.

If he isn't in the Afghan-Pakistani border, where do you think he is?

No, they are not withdrawing ( starship) troopers ;-) I anticipate that they are relocating them.

http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=84931

RAWALPIDNI, November 28 (Online): Referring to troops pull out from the embattled South Waziristan zone, Inter Services Public Relation (ISPR) Spokesman Maj Gen Shaukat Sultan said that security forces would net be pulled out of the volatile region of South Waziristan.

He said action would be taken as and when required if there was credible information about the presence of foreign militants or their involvement in terrorist activities.

Clarifying a news item appearing in a section of press regarding the removal of check posts and pullout of troops from Wana, ISPR Chief said that since area of Ahmad Zai Wazir has been secured and wanted men surrendered to the government, check posts in Azam Warsak and Shin Warsak will be manned by the local tribesmen.

Political administration and security forces would concentrate on stabilization of situation in the area and would also focus on development activities.

He was determined to say that operation would continue in Mahsud area where some of the wanted men were still at large and had not yet surrendered.

Enumerating three purposes for deployment of security forces in FATA, secure the western borders, assist the political administration in undertaking the development works and apprehend the foreign and local militants who were hiding in some of these areas.

He said that presence of aliens in the area and their local facilitators and their activities have disrupted the development works, as these elements were not involved in terrorist activities with in the country but also in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Some of the areas have been cleansed of the miscreants while the government with due assistance by the local tribesmen would ensure that there was no reemergence of miscreants in these areas, he added.

"not withdrawing...relocating"

Okay.

(I don't think I'll be seeing that movie, a little too creepy)

Time to take out and Jalaluddin Haqqani and Sarajuddin Haqqani

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=126&art_id=vn20041129025411199C740898

US Marines 'itching' to track down Osama

By Nick Meo

The army guy was scattering handfuls of Osama bin Laden leaflets from his Humvee as the heavily-armed convoy bumped through a mudbrick village on the way to the Pakistan border.

He nurtured the unlikely hope that somebody with information would find them lying in the road.

The leaflets, designed by a psychological operations team based at Fire Base Salerno, did not mention the $25-million reward but featured colour pictures of Bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, his al-Qaeda deputy, and the one-eyed Mullah Omar looking like evil zombies from a horror film.

The caption in Pushtun mocked them for drawing out a war that they could not win.

"Nobody really thinks Bin Laden is here in Afghanistan," said the soldier, whose job is to make friends with Afghan villagers in the hope of finding useful intelligence. "But a lot of people go to and fro across the border. Just maybe somebody who knows something we want to know will pick up a leaflet."

The soldier has been seconded to a deeply frustrated Marine unit.

After six months in Afghanistan, Lima Company still hasn't been in a skirmish with the enemy, which is just over the Pakistan border - a border that they may not cross.

Their mission is to drive from their base in the city of Khowst to Border Checkpoint (BCP) Three - one of a series of spectacular hilltop forts ringed with blast barriers and razor wire - which controls a key border crossing into Afghanistan. It overlooks the rugged mountains of North Waziristan in Pakistan's north-west Frontier Province, the direction in which BCP 3's machine guns are pointed.

A Marine officer spat a stream of brown saliva from chewing tobacco in the direction of Pakistan.

"We all know al-Qaeda and the Taliban are in there somewhere," he said. "Maybe that's where Bin Laden is hiding.

"We would dearly love to go in there, track them down, and end the war here and now. But for political reasons we can't."

Waziristan, a wild tribal territory almost beyond the control of Islamabad, is one of the most likely hideouts for Bin Laden, who is thought to be somewhere on the border.

This was backed up when he resurfaced in a video message to America's electorate just before the November 2 election.

But after three years of the biggest manhunt in history, the border has been scoured and the possibility of Bin Laden being in a different hiding place looks more likely than it did before.

The Islamist slums of Karachi or mountainous Pakistani Kashmir, the base for a decade-long jihad against India, are other possibilities that the FBI's manhunters are now believed to be looking at more carefully. Some analysts believe he may have escaped from Pakistan to his family homeland in Yemen, or to one of Africa's lawless states.

Away from the hunt for Bin Laden, a bloody guerrilla war that the outside world hardly sees continues on the border.

Cdr Sakhi Rahman's force was attacked at BCP 3 a few weeks ago. One of his officers lost an arm and another was injured in the hand. Several Taliban attackers were killed.

The commander said Pakistani militia men, who man the frontier a few hundred metres away, had helped the Taliban recover their dead and wounded, and his men had once killed a Pakistani militia man who had joined in an attack.

He said he had been instructed not to speak to the press by the people from Chapman, the US base for the CIA, special forces and other publicity-shy secret warriors who recruited, trained, and armed the 1 000-strong mercenary army manning the border forts to which Rahman belongs.

But he was boiling with anger and spoke anyway.

"Our intelligence told us that the attackers were all Pakistanis and they were paid 5 000 rupees each.

"They were Haqqani's men. Everybody knows he lives in Miram Shah. Why don't the Pakistanis arrest him?"

Jalaluddin Haqqani is a veteran warlord in his 70s who once fought the Soviets with US-supplied weapons and is now allied to al-Qaeda. He has become the biggest thorn in the side of American forces in Khowst province.

Putting a $250 000 bounty on his head has not yet eliminated the Haqqani problem, although some believe he may now be living in Saudi Arabia in semi-retirement, leaving the day-to-day running of his war to his son, Sarajuddin.

His Arab friends' money pays for "a chain of madrassas inside Pakistan" and he is regarded as the main instigator of the border guerrilla war in Khowst Province.

US officers say it is Haqqani's network which sends young brainwashed assassins across the border to kill government officials in suicide attacks, ambushes lorries bringing supplies to US bases on the dangerous road from Kabul, and masterminds mass attacks on government positions in which badly-trained teenage guerrillas are often slaughtered.

BCP 2, a few miles away, has the graves of 40 of them outside its perimeter.

Rahman said he believed the border war would end quickly if Pakistan wanted it to.

"Pakistan says it is helping America but it is not. Pakistan is two-faced," the commander said.

Gen Kilbaz Sherzai, an old communist intelligence chief trained at the Frunze Military Academy, the Soviet Sandhurst, shares that view. He now works for the Americans in Khowst and recently survived a suicide-bomb attempt by an inept attacker.

"The boy was sent by Haqqani," the general said. "He believed that he would go to paradise by killing an Afghan who was working with infidels, but instead he is in an American prison."

The general is convinced that Haqqani is a key player whose capture could lead to the biggest prize in the war on terror.

"He is a friend of Bin Laden and has many links with Al-Qaeda," he said. "I'm sure he knows where Osama is. We just don't know why Pakistan doesn't arrest him." - Independent Foreign Service

Good reading! Thanks for posting. It does show for all Pakistan's help, that government still leaves much to be desired.

Chechen terror suspect held

QUETTA (AFP) - Police arrested a suspected Chechen terrorist as he fled after an abortive robbery attempt near the Afghan border in southwest Pakistan, officials said. The man was seized in the dusty frontier town of Quetta after throwing a grenade at officers as he tried to escape, provincial police chief Muhammad Yaqoob told AFP.

The suspect later said he was a Chechen named Abdul Ghaffar and had recently left Wana, the main town in South Waziristan — the region where Pakistani security forces have been hunting militants linked to Al-Qaeda, Yaqoob added.
Wana lies about 400 kilometers (248 miles) northeast of Quetta, the capital of restive Baluchistan province.

“We have arrested a suspected terrorist when he was running after a failed robbery attempt in a money changer’s shop,” Yaqoob said. Three of the Chechen’s accomplices managed to escape and were being hunted by police, he added. There were no casualties from the grenade blast.

Ghaffar, aged about 35 and well-built, said he and his companions were starving and had no money which forced them to make the robbery attempt, city Mayor Muham-mad Rahim Kakar told AFP.
Ghaffar told investigators the group came to Quetta as the authorities had pushed the militants out of South Waziristan, Rahim said.

Since early this year Pakistan, a key US ally in its war on terror, has conducted several major operations near Wana. It has destroyed hideouts and training camps of militants linked to Osama bin Laden’s terror network.
Pakistan pushed about 75,000 regular troops into the area to hunt up to 600 Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters believed to have crossed from Afghanistan after the late 2001 ousting of the hardline Islamic Taliban regime.

Military officials say fewer than 100 of the estimated 600 foreign militants, including Chechens and Uzbeks, are still in Pakistan, while others have either been killed or fled to Afghanistan.

The Nation

That sounds optimistic. It's possible, because they've been making announcements for weeks that they have the area surrounded and he's not there. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

I think the news last week about Pakistan saying UBL wasn't in the border region was nothing more than trying to "shake the tree" and see if anything falls out -

I also think that UBL (and Al Zawahiri) are most likely right there in Pakistan - And most likely somewhere along the border region - As we all know that terrain in that region is brutal and makes military operations there extremely more difficult -

I would also say that the notion that UBL has traveled to Iran or S.A just doesn't fit his M.O. (why would he put himself at the possibly mercy of a centralized Gov't) -

I think UBL has just simply been ekking out a survival in the border region of Pakistan - We (U.S.) have not sent forces into that region and thus UBL has had no reason to move -

And while we have possible (and probably assuredly) sent small teams of America SOF units into the border region of Pakistan (for Recon and snatch and grab missions) we have never sent any where near the number of forces that would be needed to capture or kill UBL -

Until we say screw all the political / Socio/ tribal / mumbojumbo and just declare come hell or high water.....we are coming in (to the Pak border region) to find any HVT that remain in this area......Until we do this....UBL will remain at large -

http://www.editorsweblog.org/2004/12/pakistan_newspa.html

Pakistan: newspaper barred from printing Bin Laden sermons

Ehsan Sehar of Nawa-I-Ahmedpur Sharqia reports that "Pakistani authorities have told a newspaper to stop publishing photos and sermons of Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden and elusive Taliban chief Mulla Omar, an official said on Wednesday. Urdu-language daily Ummat has been printing the wanted pair's images and speeches since late 2001, when a US-led military campaign ousted Afghanistan's hardline Islamic Taliban militia from power. "We have issued a notice, asking them to explain from where they were getting these statements by Osama Bin Laden and Mulla Omar every day," Sindh government spokesman Salahuddin Haider said."

"Haider said the two had been declared international terrorists so the government had a right to know from where the newspaper was getting the material. "There are also strong suspicions that the newspaper might be getting funds from these groups linked to Taliban and Al Qaeda," Haider said. The newspaper said it had already ceased publishing material on Bin Laden and Omar, but denied receiving funds from any group. "We have received the notice on Tuesday, but had stopped publishing the sayings and photographs three days back," a senior official of the newspaper said, requesting anonymity."