*Red* Mosque . . . *Red* flashing banner . . . *Red* ink
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22080495-2703,00.html
Al-Qa’ida ‘directed mosque siege’
Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent | July 16, 2007 (excerpted)
AL-QA’IDA was behind last week’s uprising at Islamabad’s Red Mosque, according to secret Pakistani government documents revealed as thousands of troops were deployed across the country yesterday.
The troop reinforcements came after a series of deadly suicide bomb attacks left scores of soldiers dead and maimed in revenge attacks by Islamic militants for last week’s mosque bloodbath.
In the latest attack, at least 16 Pakistani security officers were killed yesterday in a series of bomb blasts and an exchange of fire with Islamist militants, officials said, adding that the death toll could go higher.
The blasts hit as a convoy of police and paramilitary troops passed through the town of Matta near the hilly Swat area, a well-known Taliban stronghold.
The attacks accompanied heightening outrage among militants over the storming of the mosque and intensifying speculation about the number of women and children who died.
They coincided with leaked reports from the Government claiming that documents recovered from the mosque and the neighbouring madrassas prove conclusively that al-Qa’ida - and specifically Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri - directed the uprising, maintaining close contact with Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who died in the battle.
Intelligence officials also claimed al-Qa’ida had sent foreign fighters to assist in the rebellion, with Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Cheema saying yesterday the bodies of at least 10 such Chechens and Arabs had been recovered. But as the Government counted the cost of the suicide attacks and anti-government protests swept several cities over the storming of the mosque, it was the controversy over the real death toll that spelled trouble ahead for President Pervez Musharraf.
General Hamid Gul, a powerful former head of the ISI spying agency who is now one of the President’s most trenchant critics, said yesterday the emerging accounts of women and children who were killed could lead to the military ruler’s downfall. “The Government is trying to hide the number of young girls killed,” he said. “As the truth comes out that young girls were gassed and burnt, riddled with bullets and killed, it’ll be bad for Musharraf.” . . .
This story led the NBC Evening News:
If we invade a chaotic Pakistan (perhaps to avenge a massive al Qaeda attack planned and authorized from the ungovernable tribal regions), a post-Musharraf successor regime will, in all likelihood, employ nuclear weapons overtly against our forces in the region (and covertly against the homeland) to resist the invasion.