A Quiet Triumph May be Brewing

American Thinker ^ | September 28, 2007 | Ray Robison

[afortiori]

So the US left the terrorists an escape route into Tora Bora. Once they had detected a large group of al Qaeda at the fortress and the likelihood of High Value Targets as determined by large scale security detachments, the US dropped the curtain on the escape routes back into Pakistan. We have been pounding the hell out of them for weeks in near complete secrecy.

But an observer may wonder why, if al Qaeda had to vacate the camps, didn't they just go to other hideouts in Pakistan? According to this article in the Telegraph: The Uzbeks are a surviving remnant of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an al-Qa'eda affiliate that fought with the Taliban against the Americans in 2001.

Its surviving members fled into Pakistan's lawless tribal belt where earlier this year their hosts turned against them following a dispute. Afghan leaders say that the Uzbeks were recently given the choice to fight the Americans in Afghanistan or face annihilation by the local tribes.

At least one sizeable group of al-Qa'eda and Taliban fighters is continuing to resist despite heavy bombing raids and attacks from US Special Forces. American military spokesmen declined to corroborate the claim, saying the operation was ongoing.

As a reminder, "Uzbeks" is a synonym for al Qaeda in the Pakistani border region and what the locals call all foreign jihadists. So the reporting from Pakistan earlier this year was spot on. Some powerful Taliban leaders have turned on al Qaeda and when their terror camps were targeted by the US they had nowhere else to go.

The Key Defection

In addition, the leader of the Pakistani jihadist groups, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, was notified a few months ago that he was on a Dead Pool style list of people that al Qaeda wanted assassinated. Rahman came to our attention in captured Iraqi documents as the go between for Saddam and the Taliban arranging military and security agreements between the two in 1999. (Our book Both In One Trench: Saddam's Secret Terror Documents will be available on Amazon.com in a few weeks.) I mentioned before that he had turned over al Qaeda associated terrorists to the Libyan government and this had made him an enemy of al Qaeda.

He is probably the most responsible for turning the Taliban -- which he had a significant hand in creating -- against al Qaeda. Which means, believe it or not, on some level he may be working with the Pakistani government and possibly the US government, since he is purely an opportunist. No doubt he will not advertise that fact to his jihadists buddies.

This cannot be overstated: it is the most crucial development since the capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Cutting al Qaeda's support in Pakistan has been a massive coup, of which our media has no clue of right now. It is the exact sort of thing that the Democrats and their media accomplices always complain that we are not doing and then completely ignore when we do it.

It bears mentioning that this cutting off of support might not have happened if Saddam had been left in power to flood the Pakistani jihad groups with cash through the Maulana and his associates. Cutting off this funding took the Maulana out of play as a major money raiser for al Qaeda and the Taliban. Without that cash, he became dispensable to al Qaeda, which may not have realized that this man wielded such power among the Taliban that he could turn them against al Qaeda.

[afortiori]

Huge story, if accurately told. Read the whole thing

[SunTzuWu]

Also here.

[Chuck54]

Very, very huge story IMO.

[Zerodown]

Very, very huge story IMO

Mo Chuck. Angelina Jolie is a very big story.

[maine-iac7]

Ah ha! Now I get it!

He is probably the most responsible for turning the Taliban -- which he had a significant hand in creating -- against al Qaeda. Which means, believe it or not, on some level he may be working with the Pakistani government and possibly the US government, since he is purely an opportunist. No doubt he will not advertise that fact to his jihadists buddies.

This cannot be overstated: it is the most crucial development since the capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Cutting al Qaeda's support in Pakistan has been a massive coup, of which our media has no clue of right now.

It is the exact sort of thing that the Democrats and their media accomplices always complain that we are not doing and then completely ignore when we do it.

The headline that Kasai was offering the Taliban a place a the table puzzled me. I thought: "There's more to this than meets the eye" and I have stood back to see what might develop.

Well, here is it.

Give the dimRAts some more tissues...

[mojito]

A most interesting analysis. Thanks for posting this.