Missile kills Pakistan tribal head

Now it is public
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=15669538&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=sas-on-alert-for-osama-swoop--name_page.html

27 June 2005
SAS ON ALERT FOR OSAMA SWOOP
Exclusive By Chris Hughes

SAS troops were last night poised to storm into Afghanistan and capture Osama bin Laden.

Special forces have "good intelligence" the al-Qaeda boss or a senior henchman is holed up in a Taliban enclave.

Two squadrons are on stand-by waiting for the go-ahead from reconnaissance troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

Specialist counter-terrorist soldiers in the rapid-deployment group are on high alert at the SAS's Hereford base.

The other team consists of troops serving around the world.

Commanders have insisted on waiting for news on the ground because of the cost of the operation, which could run into hundreds of thousands of pounds and stretch vital SAS resources.

A senior MOD source said last night: "Although this would cost a lot of money, if the intelligence was good the resources would be made available."

It was previously believed the SAS would send a large deployment to spearhead a major British forces presence in Afghanistan next year.

But sources say that if the bin Laden operation comes off, it will be a "short-term project".

In 2001, bin Laden escaped as the SAS attacked 4,000 al-Qaeda fighters in Tora Bora caves.

I sosmehow think the location is not Afghanistan...

Then we are at least two...

http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-india_pakistan/diplomacy_2620.jsp

excerpt

But the most unstable element in the new India-Pakistan peace equation is Pervez Musharraf himself. For the moment, the president is being propped up by the Pakistani army and bureaucratic elite, but he is also increasingly under siege by the Islamists who now run two of Pakistan's four provinces and are making governance in the other two extremely difficult. Many Pakistanis now regard the "real" ruler of Pakistan as the "ghaib (absent) imam" - the man that tens of thousands of American soldiers, even more Pakistani ones, the cream of the CIA and the British SAS cannot find. Beneath the surface, the fief of Osama bin Laden seems to run from above the Durand Line to well below Pathan City on the Pakistani smugglers' coast.

The resemblance of Pakistan to the chaos in Iraq is growing. True, the toll of organised murder and mayhem is not yet on the Iraqi scale. But the farsightedness of Musharraf's predecessor and Washington's second favourite Pakistani general (Zia ul-Haq) is bringing it closer. Islamist radicals of different stripes are able to strike at will, and officials who take an "un-Islamic" line are left in no doubt about what awaits them when the khalifat (kingdom of Allah) is finally established in every corner of Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the law and its minions no longer guarantee sanctity of life and limb, especially those of women and religious minorities. Islamic justice has all but replaced the centuries old penal code under which rapists used to be tried - and hanged. One gang-rape victim, Mukhtaran Mai, has eventually been able to tell her story to the world, but many of her sisters are forced to suffer the same indignity in silence. Shi'a Islamic shrines are regularly targeted, and Christians advertise their faith at the risk of their lives. Even television editors are pressed to blank out any scene that shows a popular Pakistani Christian test cricketer crossing himself every time he scores a century.

The voices of Pakistani progressives are clearly heard in the international and local print media, but inside Pakistan they are in retreat. Mullahs on the make are emboldened by the meteoric rise of fundamentalist Islam to influence government policy and the social environment (the renaming of streets honouring "infidels" and not so pious Muslims is one example).

Pakistani governments, at both federal and provincial levels, are in disarray. American pressure to shut down tens of thousands of Islamic madrasa (religious schools) had led Musharraf to embark on a flurry of educational reforms covering the private sector. A mass movement of mullahs and warnings by fundamentalists within the army led him to retreat, then to switch his reformist attention to public-sector schools. At that point, fundamentalists in his own parliamentary party opposed him, and that reform too was scuppered.

The mullahs, like mongrels chasing after a frightened postman, have chased Pervez Musharraf up a tall tree. They can't climb after him but he can't come down. He may try to divert their yapping attention by directing what persecuting power his government possesses on hapless stalwarts of the Bhutto family's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) - ironically, the only one capable of taking on the fundamentalists; or by tolerating attacks on helpless women participating in a marathon. When Asma Jahangir, head of Pakistan's human right commission, can be assaulted in Lahore's main street, how healthy can Pakistan be?

A stone-age recipe

Some observers of Pakistani politics argue that Indian leaders would not waste time negotiating difficult deals over Kashmir with a Pakistani president who was toothless and impotent. A more realistic view is based on Indians' understanding that real power in Pakistan lies with the army, and that any deal with its figurehead Pervez Musharraf will have the army's imprimatur.

In return, so the argument runs, Pakistan's army will continue to back Musharraf for as long as he is supported by American trust and money. This is likely to continue, for Washington desperately needs Musharraf and his army alike. The Afghan crisis is unresolved. The Taliban remain a potent threat. The situation in Iraq is not getting any better. And Saudi Arabia, the root of America's oil interests, remains unstable.

But if an arc of regional crisis is Musharraf's fragile guarantee of power, it leaves two questions whose answers illuminate the Pakistani dilemma:

why don't the Americans force Musharraf and his army to repress the fundamentalists, thus helping to reinforce the hopes of the cautious peace diplomacy between India and Pakistan?
There is only one thing wrong with that. Half the Pakistani army is fundamentalist; the cunning Zia ul-Haq made sure of that by stuffing it with mullah zealots of his own kind

why don't the Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan take matters to their logical conclusion, and (with the help of collaborators inside the army) overthrow Musharraf and seize state power?
There is one thing wrong with that scenario, too. The day the fundamentalists seize power, the Americans - now Pakistan's sole financiers - will pull the rug from under their Islamic feet, and Pakistan's economy will collapse. Even stone-age fundamentalists need money.

So bus diplomacy, Kashmir talks, and Advani's visit to Jinnah's mausoleum should be welcomed. But the history of Pakistan-India relations is a warning not to get too optimistic too soon. And through it all, don't forget the "ghaib imam" laughing in the mountains.

Very good background info.
Thanx

additional info from SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW Weekly Assessments & Briefings Volume 3, No. 50, June 27, 2005

http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/sair/Archives/3_50.htm (next Monday)

New 'Great Game' Kanchan Lakshman
Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management; Assistant Editor, Faultlines: Writings on Conflict & Resolution

That all is not well between Pakistan and Afghanistan was apparent when the U.S. President George W. Bush indulged in some telephonic diplomacy on June 21, 2005, to resolve friction between two key allies in the 'war on terror', urging both to exercise restraint. Shortly after President Bush's call to General Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani President called his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai and both of them reportedly promised to 'continue co-operation' in combating terrorism. But the seriousness of the situation was evident in the fact that the General called Karzai a second time on June 23 to reiterate Pakistan's claim that it was not involved in terrorist incidents in Afghanistan.

President Bush was forced to step in after Pakistan reacted strongly to Afghanistan disclosing that it had arrested three Pakistanis for allegedly planning to assassinate the former US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. The three were arrested on June 19 from the eastern Laghman province, where the Afghan-born Khalilzad, nominated as the next US envoy to Iraq, was inaugurating reconstruction projects. The trio was reportedly waiting for suicide vests packed with explosives to come from Pakistan, but these never arrived, and they were instructed, instead, to carry out the assassination with the weapons they had in hand. While the group affiliation has not been disclosed thus far, a senior intelligence official was quoted as saying on Afghan National Television that they had trained in a "terrorist camp in Pakistan". While Abdul Alim and Murad Khan hail from the Pakistani city of Peshawar, Zahid is from North West Frontier Province on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Jawed Ludin, President Karzai's spokesperson, has said that there have been a series of attacks in recent weeks, committed by terrorists who had allegedly entered from Pakistan, including a suicide bombing on June 1, 2005, at a mosque in Kandahar, which killed 20 people. Ludin was more assertive at a press conference in Kabul on June 22 when he said "some senior members of the Taliban, including some who are involved in killings and are considered terrorists, are in Pakistan." President Karzai, addressing a gathering of the Ulema (clerics), alleged that Islamabad was blackmailing the Taliban and threatening to hand their families over to the US unless they did as told.

That the Afghan-Pakistan theatre is critical for the US-led war on terror needs no reiteration. And the U.S. will do the utmost to prevent the rather hasty conclusion by some that Afghanistan is fast becoming the 'forgotten eastern front'. But the vital issue, in terms of an end game, is the presence and operation of surviving elements of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan. US and Afghan officials have, in recent times, stated that Osama bin Laden is hiding in the tribal region along the Pakistan-Afghan border and, crucially, President Pervez Musharraf confirmed in Auckland recently that he believes bin Laden is probably somewhere in the area of Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. CIA Director Porter Goss, while disclosing that he had "an excellent idea of where he [Laden] is," in his interview to Time had alluded at Pakistan when he talked about the "very difficult question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states" And Khalilzad had, on June 19, stated that there was a good chance that the fugitive Taliban chief, Mullah Mohammad Omar, was hiding in Pakistan. In an interview to Aina Television, Khalilzad disclosed that a Pakistani TV channel had interviewed a senior Taliban 'commander', Mullah Akhtar Usmani, at a time when Pakistani officials claimed they did not know the whereabouts of Taliban leaders. "If a TV station can get in touch with them, how can the intelligence service of a country, which has nuclear bombs and a lot of security and military forces, not find them?" Khalilzad queried.

The Taliban, as has been documented extensively, exists on both sides of the border. While they have obviously been weakened to a certain extent, they retain substantial capacities to execute attacks. While Islamabad has managed to quieten the chaotic Waziristan region along the Afghan border, the mountainous terrain along the Durand Line provides a secure pathway and safe hideout for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Pakistani insecurities on the Afghan front also relate to the contested nature of the Durand Line. In the opinion of most Afghans, the Durand Line should rightly have been drawn at Attock, and this is what the Afghans will press for when their country is strong enough. Within this context, it is useful to note that, south of the Durand Line, in what is currently Pakistani territory, land records, police and legal records, etc, still refer to the people as 'Afghan'.

Afghan officials have alleged for weeks now that the Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives were coming in from Pakistan, where they are reportedly based in areas of the North West Frontier Province and also from Balochistan. Since the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) launched 30 Arab and Pakistani militants into the Kunar and Nangarhar provinces almost a year ago under the leadership of Colonel Haq Nawaz, sources indicate that Taliban leaders have held frequent meetings with their handlers in Pakistan at Quetta, Peshawar (where the 'moderate Taliban' Jaishul Muslim is based), Kohat, Waziristan and other locations. For instance, on August 11, 2004, senior Taliban leaders, including Mullah Obaidullah, Akhtar Usmani (the 'commander' mentioned by Khalilzad), Akhtar Mansoor and Maulvi Razzak, had met in Quetta to discuss ways to disrupt the October 2004-presidential elections in Kandahar, Zabul, Uruzgan, Nimroz and Helmand provinces.

The more recent escalation in attacks along the border is partly due to the fact that the snow has melted from mountain passes, allowing terrorists to launch strikes from Pakistan and possibly due to the less-reported regrouping of the Taliban/Al Qaeda. U.S. military spokesperson, Colonel James Yonts, revealed on June 20 that foreign terrorists, backed by networks channeling them money and arms, had come into Afghanistan to try and subvert parliamentary elections slated for September 16, 2005. The October 2004 Afghan presidential elections had been relatively peaceful, since Pakistan had sealed the border and executed operations against the terrorists. Afghan officials say that such levels of cooperation are not forthcoming from Islamabad now.

Since March 2005, some 195 persons, including at least 29 U.S. troops and 70 Afghan security force personnel, have died in various incidents of terrorist violence across Afghanistan. At the other end, approximately 300 terrorists have been killed in various security operations.

Violence, according to Ludin, is worst near the Pakistan border. The subversion that targets Afghan provinces close to Pakistan, like Paktika, is a reality despite the fact that Islamabad has deployed approximately 70,000 troops on their side of the border. This suggests that the Taliban/Al Qaeda have been provided space by the military to operate in the Pakistani areas along the border. Significantly, Balochistan and the NWFP are governed by the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, a fundamentalist alliance with close links to the Taliban.

The security establishment in Afghanistan, including coalition intelligence sources, has reportedly indicated a disturbing shift in terrorist tactics, with the Jehadis increasingly adopting 'Iraq-style' suicide attacks. And such attacks are bound to increase ahead of the September parliamentary elections. Defence Minister Rahim Wardak said on June 17 in an interview to the Associated Press that he had received intelligence that Al Qaeda had brought at least six Arab operatives into Afghanistan in the past three weeks. According to him, while one suicide bomber attacked a funeral service for a pro-government cleric at a Kandahar mosque on June 1, killing 20 persons, another rammed a vehicle laden with explosives into a U.S. convoy in Kandahar on June 13, injuring four U.S. soldiers. Suicide bombings are a relatively rare phenomenon in Afghanistan, with most of them suspected to have been carried out by non-Afghans, primarily Arabs. While the minister did not disclose how the suicide bombers entered Afghanistan, officials said men and material are usually moved through Pakistan, implying that Pakistan is again becoming a staging post for the Arab Jehadi. Incidentally, Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao told Daily Times on June 23 that the Al Qaeda had established a strong nexus with outlawed extremist groups in Pakistan. Although he did not provide names, the minister said banned groups were facilitating Al Qaeda operatives inside Pakistan. Among the proscribed groups in Pakistan are: Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), Jamiat-ul-Ansar (JuA), Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Khuddam-ul-Furqan and Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP).

Pakistan is noticeably seeking to regain the foothold it lost after the Taliban rout in Afghanistan, and is reframing its quest for 'strategic depth'. Pending a U.S. 'solution' or 'exit', the Pakistani leadership will continue to seek means to recover leverage in Afghanistan. More importantly and possibly critical to Pakistan's desire for strategic space, there are concerns that an Afghan regime that is friendlier to India could leave Pakistan sandwiched between two 'adversaries', something which no regime in Islamabad would find acceptable.

I'm disappointed with the current policy of allowing Pakistan an area of Afghanistan to play with. That area will only end up becoming a terrorist haven.

I'll keep my fingers crossed!

1281....fingers crossed.

The shit magnet is working....drawing Jihadists with a death wish to the killing fields....

I'm okay with that....better to kill them there, instead of dealing with them elsewhere...

Semper Fi

whoa!

I will listen to the Batchelor show tonight - see what Loftus and Bodansky et al have to say.

What did Loftus say?

nothing about this, I will tune in again tonight.

The Islamization process is speeding up.

http://www.dawn.com/2005/07/18/top3.htm

Fazl says Islamisation process unstoppable

SWABI, July 17: Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly and Secretary-General of JUI, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, said on Sunday that after the passage of the Hasba bill nobody could stop the Islamisation process in the Frontier province. Addressing a public meeting here, he said getting the Hasba bill passed through the NWFP Assembly was the democratic right of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal government.

Maulana Fazl said the Hasba bill would be also approved by the Council for Islamic Ideology as it had been drafted in line with its directives. However, he said, the NWFP Assembly had every right under the constitution to frame laws. Islamisation of the province was a long-standing demand of the people and their wish was fulfilled by the MMA.

The MMA leader said once implemented, the bill would uproot all evils from the society, setting an example for other provinces to follow. Maulana Fazl said there was nothing wrong in the bill and leaders of various political parties were making a hue and cry just for political gains.

He warned the federal government that if it did not stop its anti-Hasba campaign religious parties would retaliate. He said the MMA would effectively defend the bill in the SC.

Pakistan's Islamization cannot happen until the army goes Islamist. They are already halfway there with the army, however.

Musharraf did not read Hasba Bill: Durrani
Monday July 18, 2005 (1442 PST)

http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=112991

NEW YORK: Rejecting censure on Hasba Bill recently adopted by the NWFP assembly as superfluous, Akram Khan Durrani, the provincial chief minister, said on Monday that the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal government would welcome positive criticism on it by the president.

"Gen Musharraf was reported to have some reservations on Hasba Bill. And once I, in a bid to know his reservations, asked him whether he had gone through the text of the Bill, he responded in negative", Durrani told a news conference here on Monday.

Durrani who runs religio-political grouping of MMA led government in NWFP said commenting and criticizing Hasba Bill without looking through its text was unfortunate.

He said the public elected representatives had approved the Hasba Bill with majority vote that had been with the NWFP governor and Council of Islamic Ideology for advice for more than one and a half year. He claimed the NWFP assembly was constitutionally authorized to adopt Hasba bill.

"Saying the bill would take us back to the Stone Age, is absolutely wrong and unfortunate", he said. Durrani said the Centre had to pay Rs. 18 billion to NWFP as electricity royalty and a reconciliatory committee had been formed to settle the feud.

He said the MMA government would offer free education and textbooks up to matric students in NWFP.

comments: I do not think that these books are The Collected Works of Shakespeare.

Asia Times writes about the open secret:

http://atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/GG19Ag03.html

Jul 19, 2005
Musharraf and his Taliban 'pals'
By Kaushik Kapisthalam

The signs are unmistakable: America's "war on terror" is in jeopardy in Afghanistan, although the locus of the renewed Taliban-led efforts seems to be across the border in Pakistan.

Playing favorites
US and other Western government officials have always been lavish in their praise of Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf. Indeed, Musharraf's supposed about-turn on supporting the Taliban after the September 11 attacks is now accepted without question. Most Taliban emerged from madrassas (seminaries) in Pakistan. However, it has always been a reality that Musharraf has treated the Taliban differently than he did al-Qaeda. For instance, even though Pakistan has arrested and handed over to the US many senior al-Qaeda leaders, not a single senior Taliban commander has been handed over by Pakistan to either the US or the Afghan government.

It is an open secret in Pakistan that virtually the entire leadership of the Taliban military hierarchy lives and operates out of the city of Quetta, which is the capital of Pakistan's Balochistan province. Since the fall of the Taliban in Kabul in late 2001, Western and Pakistani reporters have been able to interview Taliban commanders and other leading figures well inside Pakistan, especially around Quetta. Despite the documented facts, the Pakistan government has always flatly denied the presence of Taliban commanders in Quetta, or elsewhere inside Pakistan for that matter.

Afghan anger
The Afghan government led by President Hamid Karzai has for some time been angry at the role of Pakistan in the recent resurgence of the Taliban. In the run-up to the Afghan presidential elections last year, Karzai complained about Taliban bases inside Pakistan to US President George W Bush. In the days that followed, Bush reportedly had a quiet conversation with Musharraf, asking him to look into Taliban activity emanating from Quetta. The Taliban attacks ended almost immediately.

The outgoing US ambassador to Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, was a staunch critic of Pakistan's support for the Taliban. However, his anger was especially evident when he excoriated Pakistan a few weeks ago after a Pakistani television network was able to interview a Taliban commander named Mullah Usmani. Khalilzad questioned Pakistan's sincerity and wondered how a television network was able to talk to a Taliban commander even as Pakistani officials denied a Taliban presence in the country. What was left unsaid was that the US government soon came to know that Mullah Usmani gave the interview not from the tribal areas of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan, but from the port city of Karachi.

To add substance to the allegations, Anis, the Afghan government daily, noted in its June 23 issue that Taliban were openly living in the Kachlogh and Pashtunabad regions of Quetta, and based their military presence in those regions. The report quoted people who recently visited Quetta and adjoining areas. The government-sponsored daily then went on to claim that senior Taliban leaders lived in residential blocks belonging to the Pakistani army in a place called Choni, which "is a military base and training center for the Pakistani army". Taliban commanders were being ferried inside Pakistan by the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), the report added.

Pakistan's fears
Ahmed Rashid, a noted expert on the Taliban, recently commented that behind Pakistan's continuing sponsorship of the Taliban and their destabilization efforts in Afghanistan lies a fear of India. During the Taliban years after they came into power in 1996, Pakistan essentially shut out other countries from Afghanistan. However, since the Taliban were deposed, India has moved into Afghanistan in a big way, with sponsorship of massive reconstruction projects, such as building key roads, hydroelectric facilities, schools and hospitals. While this may not seem dangerous to most observers, Pakistan's ruling elite have always taught themselves to see a sinister plot behind every Indian effort and the idea of an Indian presence on their Western borders accentuates Pakistani fears.

Pakistan's Urdu newspapers, whose content is tightly controlled by the government and intelligence agencies, routinely publish stories of "Indian agents" being involved in the separatist violence in Balochistan, and even the sectarian attacks deep inside Pakistan. Pakistan's military commanders and other leaders have also continued to point the finger at Indian "consulates" in the Afghan towns of Kandahar and Jalalabad as the source of troubles between Afghanistan and Pakistan. These fears, which many believe are unfounded, are used as a basis by the Pakistani establishment to justify continued support to the Taliban.

However, not many in Pakistan acknowledge what some see as extraordinary efforts by the US to accommodate Pakistani concerns in Afghanistan. To begin with, the US had pressed the Karzai government to restrict its security ties with India. The US also allowed Pakistan to veto a possible Indian military presence in Afghanistan, even though Indian troops there could have relieved the US of a tremendous burden, given the global American military deployment. American diplomats also pressured Karzai to curtail the power of former Northern Alliance elements, many of whom have been sidelined since 2004. This was done solely to assuage Pakistani concerns.

After the Afghan presidential election last year, the US negotiated a deal between the Karzai government and Pakistan under which former Taliban leaders would receive amnesty and be given roles in the government if they surrendered and renounced violence. For its part, Pakistan was supposed to hand over senior hardcore Taliban commanders to the Afghan government. However, when the time came for Pakistan to live up to its end of the bargain, the Musharraf government reneged. One former Western diplomat commented to Asia Times Online, "The Paks got greedy. They have figured that they need not settle for partial influence in Kabul when they can use the Talibs to control most of Afghanistan." The Pakistanis simply did not want to see a strong central government in Kabul, the diplomat added.

Musharraf's promise
Western leaders tout Musharraf's speech to Pakistanis a couple of days after September 11, in which he justified his decision to join the US side against jihadis. But few seem to recall that Musharraf made another less publicized speech on September 19, 2001 in Urdu, Pakistan's national language, in which he made it clear that he would do everything within his power to make sure that the Taliban emerged unharmed in the "war on terror". While the English-language speech was for Western consumption, the Urdu speech was meant to assuage his countrymen regarding the Taliban. Whether the US wants to admit it or not, it is patent now that Musharraf has kept that particular promise to protect the Taliban.

In a speech to the Australian Press Club in June this year, Musharraf justified Pakistan's support for the Taliban and insinuated that the US was to blame for September 11 because of its refusal to engage the Taliban regime before that event. To some, this was proof that the Pakistani establishment still felt that supporting the Taliban was in Pakistan's interests.

The former Western diplomat added that many in US military circles were deeply unhappy about Pakistan's role. The recent killing of US Navy special forces operatives and the downing of a US helicopter in northern Kunar province of Afghanistan were the handiwork not of the Taliban but of militiamen loyal to Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, according to the diplomat. Hekmatyar, who was based in Iran during the Taliban rule over Kabul, had now teamed up with Taliban commander Jalauddin Haqqani, both of whom were currently under the protection of the ISI, he said.

Musharraf and the Pakistani military establishment are unlikely to end their sponsorship of the Taliban, regardless of what the Afghan government or the coalition field commanders in Afghanistan may say or do. Some experts feel that it may be time for Bush to remind Musharraf that Pakistan can either be with the Taliban, or with the US - a choice that Musharraf supposedly made in favor of the latter soon after September 11. Without such pressure, however, it seems certain that America's Afghan project is inexorably heading towards disaster.

Kaushik Kapisthalam is a freelance defense and strategic affairs analyst based in the United States. He can be reached at contact@kapisthalam.com

PAKISTAN: TOP TALIBAN LEADER ARRESTED

Peshawar, 19 July (AKI/DAWN) - A top Taliban leader Maulvi Abdul Kabir has been arrested, along with his two brothers and their aide, from a refugee camp in Akora Khattak, about 51 kilometres east of the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar, sources told the Pakistani daily Dawn. Federal intelligence agency personnel from Islamabad raided the Afghan refugee camp in Akora Khattak. The agency arrested the Taliban leader, who is the former governor of the Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, brothers Abdul Haq and Abdul Aziz, and aide Abdul Qadeer, four days ago, the sources said.

Abdul Kabir was the governor of Nangarhar up until the US-led coalition forces ousted the Taliban government in October 2001. He was also commander in the east of Afghanistan during the rule of the Taliban and was said to be the No 3 in the Taliban’s hierarchy.

The sources said that despite being arrested four days ago, the identities of the four were confirmed by their interrogators on Monday. Officials were not available to confirm their arrest.

Both American and Afghan officials have often complained that many members of the ousted Taliban regime have found sanctuary in Pakistan, from where they plan and launch attacks inside Afghanistan.

Pakistan was the main supporter of the Taliban but after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States, Pakistan officially stopped all support for the Islamists when the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden.

Currently, Pakistan has deployed some 70,000 troops along its border with Afghanistan in an effort to curb militant activity in the area.

http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=Security&loid=8.0.188539814&par=0

I put my 2 cents on Balochistan:

http://www.dawn.com/2005/07/23/top3.htm

Musharraf hopes Osama is held outside Pakistan

By Masood Haider and Anwar Iqbal

NEW YORK / WASHINGTON, July 22: President General Pervez Musharraf has said he will prefer that Osama bin Laden is captured by the American forces in Afghanistan and declared that agents from other countries will not be allowed to enter Pakistan to capture the Al Qaeda leader. "We hope he's found in Afghanistan by the Americans," the president told ABC News in an interview on Wednesday, adding later, "I would much prefer that somebody else handled him."

When referred to a recent statement by CIA Chief Porte Goss that the United States had an excellent idea where Osama was, but would have a difficult time bringing him to justice because of sovereignty issues, President Musharraf said that he would not let other countries into Pakistan, if Al Qaeda leader was indeed there.

"We are capable of doing it," he added. "If we get intelligence, we will do it ourselves."

Asked whether Pakistan would turn Osama over to the United States if he was found in Pakistan, President Musharraf said he would "have to see what happens".

When his attention was drawn to recent polls showing that some 50 per cent of Pakistanis supported Osama, President Musharraf rejected the idea that his countrymen supported terrorism.

He said it's not terrorism his people supported, but they were against US policies.

"I think exactly that they are opposed to US policy, and they see him (Osama) as a person who is fighting the policies of United States," he said. "But if you were to take a poll on are they in favour of terrorist attacks anywhere in the world like 9/11 or London, I am reasonably sure the poll will indicate otherwise."

The president said Americans had a distorted sense of Pakistan, seeing it a nation full of extremists.

"The vast majority is moderate," he said. "the US must understand that the vast majority here are moderate. If they were extremists I wouldn't be popular here."

In reply to a question about London bombings, Gen Musharraf rejected the suggestion that Pakistan was an incubator for terrorism and said these attacks showed Britain had its own problems with extremists.

After recent bombings on London's transport system, British Prime Minister Tony Blair turned his attention to Pakistan, calling on Gen Musharraf to crack down on terrorist elements. President Musharraf, however, said that blame for the bombings lay elsewhere. "The problem is not in Pakistan; the problem is in England, let that be clear," he said. He said England had been slow to react to growing extremism within its borders, including not acting upon a fatwa he said had been issued against him. "What did England do about this [the fatwa]?" he asked. "Have they banned these organizations? Have they arrested the person who has done that? No, nothing. Nothing. In the name of human rights, in the name of liberty, human liberty, freedom of speech, this is going on. So why blame us? Please set your own house in order. Everyone has to do something." Gen Musharraf said there was "no credible intelligence" tying the London bombers to Pakistan, despite reports that three of the four had spent time there. The London bombers were Britons, he said. "The problem is not in Pakistan but in England," he said. "Their hatred has been spread in London and nobody has moved against them. So why are they blaming Pakistan?"

1,300