Posted on 06/23/2002 6:17:53 AM PDT by Ranger
Hundreds of Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters are clandestine guests of the Pakistani military and reside in its barracks in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir while many of its senior leaders live in the country's large cities and towns, according to Indian officials and intelligence analysts.
They say US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was apparently referring to this when he said during his visit to New Delhi last week that Al-Qaeda fighters - many of them apparently Pakistanis -- were operating near the Line of Control (LoC) between India and Pakistan.
"I do not have hard evidence of precisely how many or who or where ..." Rumsfeld said.
He however seemed to change his statement in Islamabad the next day apparently after Pakistan strongly reacted to his Delhi statement and accused him of being taken in by Indian propaganda.
Intelligence information alleging Al-Qaeda operations in Kashmir "tends to be speculative; it is not actionable," Rumsfeld said apparently to placate the Pakistanis.
Analysts said no estimates of the number of Al-Qaeda fighters in Pakistan were available, but noted Islamabad had been permitted by the US to airlift hundreds, if not thousands, of them, mostly Pakistanis, from Kunduz in northern Afghanistan after they were trapped by US-led forces in November last year.
"If you make a narrow definition of Al-Qaeda as the Arabs targeting US, then the numbers may be small. But Al-Qaeda has a wider network and a number of Pakistani terrorist groups, including Lashker-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, are all part of it," a senior Indian official knowledgeable about their operations said.
"The US is aware of it. As the incidents in Islamabad and Karachi showed, they are all inter-linked," he said, referring to the suicide bomb attacks in a church in Islamabad's diplomatic enclave in March and two devastating attacks in the port city in May and June.
"He (Rumsfeld) made the remarks in India because he had the information. He watered it down in Pakistan because they (Islamabad) were unwilling to acknowledge that Al-Qaeda fighters are in the country," said Afsar Karim, a retired major general of the Indian Army and an analyst on international terrorism.
According to Karim, apart from those airlifted from Kunduz, more than 4,000 Taliban and Al-Qaeda activists had escaped from the fighting in Afghanistan and entered Pakistan.
"Their senior leaders are hiding in big towns. Their cadres who are mere fighters merged into the army in remote areas," he said.
Officials said intelligence reports corroborated the information, though figures varied with some putting it at "thousands."
While hundreds were airlifted by Pakistani helicopters from Kunduz in night operations, more escaped to Pakistan from Tora Bora mountains, close to the Pakistani border, in the face of heavy bombardment by the US-led forces.
"They entered Pakistan with the connivance of the Pakistani army without which they could not have come," an official told IANS.
According to Karim, Pakistan army corps commanders, who support the cause of jehad in Afghanistan and Kashmir, have told President Pervez Musharraf: "You collect international aid and we won't come in the way. And we don't want you to come in our way" by attempting to crack down on the Al-Qaeda elements.
"This is convenient to Musharraf, who at heart himself is a jehadi. Even if he wanted to stop it he would not be able to," Karim added.
But the attacks by the Al-Qaeda on European and American targets in Pakistan have put pressure on Musharraf and forced the US to remove the kid gloves.
"The Americans are skating on thin ice" because they need Musharraf's cooperation to hunt down the terrorists. At the same time, they know that Pakistan continues to be a terrorist haven," Karim said.
Rumsfeld, at a regular Pentagon briefing on his return to Washington, was asked if Pakistan acknowledged Al-Qaeda operating from inside its territory.
"There's no question, but the Pakistanis understand that the border is porous and a lot of folks came over -- Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
"President Musharraf is bound to and determined -- if and when he finds Al-Qaeda or Taliban milling around in his country -- to go get them. And he has demonstrated that and has been enormously helpful," he added.
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