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Brain Drain - Mansoor Ijaz on KSM
National Review Online ^ | 3/4/03 | Mansoor Ijaz

Posted on 03/04/2003 6:41:28 AM PST by Lyford

Pakistan's intelligence services have a notorious reputation for being indistinguishable from the hoodlums they chase in the name of preserving national security for the country's 155 million citizens. So it was in the wee hours of last Saturday morning that a masterful raid on an al Qaeda safe house near Islamabad by Inter-Services Intelligence officials netted one of the world's most dangerous men, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. He left behind a veritable gold mine of information about al Qaeda's current and future terrorist operations.In the process, the ISI may have recast its tarnished image as a stalwart in the global war against terrorism and strengthened Gen. Pervez Musharraf's hands in rooting out terror cells on his soil.

The raid was a product of months of patient and deliberate planning in close coordination with U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement authorities to unearth terrorist hideouts throughout the region. It marked the first time since September 11, 2001 that ISI had used strategic surveillance and stalking techniques to flush out an al Qaeda bigwig.

And while U.S. signals intelligence and other monitoring equipment were crucial in expanding the scope of the operation and gleaning vital statistics prior to the arrests last Saturday, there was a marked shift inside ISI to employ its cultural expertise and deep knowledge of Pakistan's underground in order to bring down senior al Qaeda leaders.

The trail got hot after Osama bin Laden's spokesman, Abul Baraa Qarshi, issued instructions in code over the terror group's underground Internet system, which revealed in some detail the next "big operation" against the United States and its allies. Reference was repeatedly made to follow the path of "Mukhtar" (translated: the "authorized one") amid Qarshi's bin Laden-inspired exhortations to heed calls for jihad.

Mukhtar is the codename of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed ("KSM").

Armed with this finding, Pakistani authorities immediately started tracking known KSM associates and found a stunning correlation between the coded underground message and activities of al Qaeda operatives above ground. KSM and his key al Qaeda cells around the world were planning significant new attacks against the United States, with never-before-employed terror tactics.

That is why the Bush administration's Homeland Security Department raised the terror alerts three weeks ago. My intelligence sources confirm that the planned attacks were on the order of magnitude of a September 11 operation, with nearly as many cells involved in various parts of the United States as were recently uncovered in Europe. Weapons of mass destruction were not contemplated for use in these acts on U.S. soil.

As tracking and surveillance continued, a little help from lady luck entered the equation. In the al Qaeda-infested border town of Quetta, an elderly couple motivated by large offers of reward money reported unusual movements of young Arab men into and out of what turned out to be an al Qaeda safe house next door to their home. Hours later, Pakistani police officials and the ISI had a pretty clear idea that KSM was in residence.

Rather than swoop in and capture him then, a strategic decision was made by ISI chief Gen. Ehsan ul Haq to blanket KSM's entourage with surveillance and stalk them to see how far and wide the network was operational inside Pakistan. KSM was flushed out of the safe house in such a way that his computers and other evidence would be left behind.

On the hard drive of KSM's Quetta safe-house computer, Pakistani police officials found a goldmine of information — names of other senior al Qaeda operatives, e-mails, telephone numbers, wire-transfer information (KSM is also Chief Financial Officer for all al Qaeda operations around the world), travel itineraries, future terror scenarios — the list goes on.

One e-mail was addressed to Abdul Qadoos, the son of a microbiologist in Rawalpindi and resident of the house where a haggardly but clean-shaven KSM was nabbed on Saturday morning when ISI, CIA, and FBI officials had concluded the stalking and surveillance was no longer yielding sufficient data to warrant the risk of losing him. A series of lightning raids followed, netting KSM, an as yet unidentified Egyptian man known only as "Ahmed" (and some suspect, possibly a relative of Egyptian-born al Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri), and Abdul Qadoos in round one, and seven Arab and Pakistani men, as yet unidentified, in round two. More arrests of significant al Qaeda operatives are expected in the coming days.

So unaware was KSM that he was being stalked that even his cell phones and audiotapes, some reportedly with instructions from bin Laden, were found amid the mess in his uptown flat. The data his computers, audiotapes, and handwritten notes yield will in all likelihood supersede in importance what we get from his hardened criminal mind, even under the most severe interrogation. As Husain Haqqani at the Carnegie Endowment has articulated with great clarity, KSM is not chief executive officer of a corporation called al Qaeda. He is a franchise owner who knows all the other franchisees. Or at least his computer knows where the key ones are.

And that's just fine for U.S. purposes, because a lesser al Qaeda operative found through decoding the franchise network may yield more important and highly localized data about the next planned attacks than a hardened senior leader would. This is precisely how the poisons network was dismantled in Europe, a network whose chief franchise owner was an Iraqi resident and a key evidentiary link between Iraq and al Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

So, what does the arrest of this terror mastermind mean for America's war on terror?

When Osama bin Laden spoke from the ether three weeks ago, the Islamist phraseology and verses of the Koran he chose to convey his jihadist message demonstrated, for the first time since September 11, a growing sense of urgency and fear about al Qaeda's ability to retaliate in the event of a U.S.-led war to disarm Iraq. His original thinking (my hypothesis) was to use the event of U.S. troops storming Baghdad as justification for a series of retaliation strikes around the world, starting in Europe and the Middle East (to effect political divides within NATO and between the U.S. and its stalwart Arab allies), and then later in the U.S. and possibly even Canada.


The retaliation infrastructure al Qaeda had set in place was extensive, very hard to build up with the proper expertise (for biological and chemical weapons), and increasingly more expensive to maintain as the U.S. succeeded in progressively shutting down sources of financing available to bin Laden.

With much of bin Laden's European network systematically dismantled by Western intelligence and bin Laden himself trying to nebulously link al Qaeda to Iraq in order to provoke the "Islam vs. West" confrontation, retaining whatever was left of the terror group's retaliation infrastructure in the Middle East and North America became a paramount concern in recent weeks.

Musharraf also apparently felt bin Laden's anxiety, and ISI profilers sensed an opportunity to get an upper hand in their own backyard against al Qaeda's hidden cells. This, coupled with a little well-timed pressure from Washington about towing the line in rooting out senior al Qaeda cells before the military campaign against Iraq was to start (a message delivered by our able Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca on her recent trip to Islamabad), sparked the sea change inside ISI about the emerging national-security threat posed by nuts the agency had once helped to create.

KSM's arrest therefore represented an opportunity, if done right, to dismantle the Middle East retaliation infrastructure before launching the war to disarm Saddam. Pentagon planners have long fretted about the cauldrons of fire al Qaeda's Saddam-enabled retaliation cells could unleash on weak Middle East governments if and when the U.S. decided to move against Iraq.

Decapitating al Qaeda's nerve center with KSM's capture could lead to a collapse of its Middle East cells, much the same way one intercepted phone call between al Qaeda biochemical czar Zarqawi and one of his Jordanian operatives led to the dismantling of much of the ricin-poison network throughout Europe.

Musharraf should now seize on the success of this capture to squeeze the warlords in his ungovernable tribal regions to cough up what remains of al Qaeda's senior leadership in their midst, including bin Laden. He could easily choke economic supply routes into the areas along the Pakistan-Afghan border, thereby raising the cost of harboring terrorists there, as well as conduct repeated lightning raids in border towns such as Quetta and Peshawar, where lesser al Qaeda leaders are still hiding, to send a message that Pakistani soil is no longer available for terrorist planning.

Maintaining the vigil in large, densely populated urban centers where al Qaeda is known to have safe houses is also an imperative.

The ISI should effect a veritable quarantine on Pakistan's rivers and exits at Karachi's seaports to insure al Qaeda is not able to use its sea vessels to get key leaders, including a possibly disguised bin Laden and Egyptian mastermind Ayman Zawahiri, out of the country.

With KSM's capture and all that it implies for war in the Middle East, Musharraf may have delivered an invaluable gift at an opportune time to his embattled friend, U.S. President George W. Bush — the possibility that a U.S.-led strike on Iraq can no longer be met with large-scale al Qaeda reprisals. He must not let that message be diluted by either abstaining or voting against the U.S. in upcoming deliberations on Iraq at the United Nations Security Council.

It cannot be overstated how the operation to capture KSM demonstrates the Bush administration's deliberate and calibrated efforts to root out those responsible for murdering 3,000 of our fellow citizens on that bright September morning.

Rooting out Saddam's weapons of mass destruction so they never make their way into the hands of people like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is not a separate task or detour along the way in fighting terror. It is the next most important step.

America must not let its guard down in the understandable need to rejoice in this major triumph of good over evil. We are finally ahead of the terror curve aligned against us — it's time to get on with finishing the job.

Mansoor Ijaz, chairman of Crescent Investment Management in New York, negotiated Sudan's offer to provide terrorism data on al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden to the Clinton administration in 1997. He also proposed the blueprint for the July 2000 ceasefire in Kashmir between Muslim separatists and Indian security forces.


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: arrest; isi; ksm; mansoorijaz; pakistan
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Good stuff here...
1 posted on 03/04/2003 6:41:29 AM PST by Lyford
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To: Lyford
Bump for later read. Thanks for the post...
2 posted on 03/04/2003 6:45:25 AM PST by eureka! (Dan Rather is a traitor to the Fourth Estate)
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To: Lyford
Ijaz bump, for when I get back.
3 posted on 03/04/2003 6:54:17 AM PST by lorrainer (So there.)
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To: hobbes1
ping for mansoor.
4 posted on 03/04/2003 6:59:56 AM PST by xsmommy
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To: Lyford
Monsoor is a monsoon of info. Very bright guy.
5 posted on 03/04/2003 7:00:09 AM PST by smith288 (Singes qui capitulent et mangent du fromage)
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To: Lyford
"KSM's arrest therefore represented an opportunity, if done right, to dismantle the Middle East retaliation infrastructure before launching the war to disarm Saddam.

Fascinating. How insightful on "our side's" part!
6 posted on 03/04/2003 7:01:11 AM PST by RightOnTheLeftCoast
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To: Lyford
Mansoor is excellent with insights and a definite asset.
7 posted on 03/04/2003 7:02:57 AM PST by Reb Raider
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To: xsmommy
He's excellent. He was FOX last nite...
8 posted on 03/04/2003 7:05:25 AM PST by hobbes1
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To: hobbes1
saw him
9 posted on 03/04/2003 7:05:58 AM PST by xsmommy
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To: Lyford
I think Mansoor is one of the most important assets on Fox.
When he speaks, I listen. Brilliant guy.
10 posted on 03/04/2003 7:08:03 AM PST by latrans
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To: Lyford
Mr. Ijaz is excellent!
Bump
11 posted on 03/04/2003 7:08:41 AM PST by Joe Driscoll
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To: latrans
Same here. He's one of the best FNC has. They should use him more.
12 posted on 03/04/2003 7:11:44 AM PST by MizSterious
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To: Lyford
Mr. Ijaz, whom I see on FNC quite often, strikes me as positively brilliant........with connections to die for. Whenever we see him pop on the tube 'round our household, you can hear a pin drop as we listen to what he has to say.
13 posted on 03/04/2003 7:13:42 AM PST by RightOnline
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To: RightOnline
Same here. He really is fantastic.
14 posted on 03/04/2003 7:18:32 AM PST by Aggie Mama
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To: Lyford
We should send some of the aid money we intended for Turkey to the Pakis instead. They've done us a tremendous favor here.
15 posted on 03/04/2003 7:19:16 AM PST by George W. Bush
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To: George W. Bush
I agree. We should do something very nice for the people of Pakistan and especially their president.
16 posted on 03/04/2003 7:27:59 AM PST by Alamo-Girl
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To: RightOnline
This guy is GOOD!

It's interesting Bubba choose to ignot Mr. Ijaz when he offered to turn in Bin Laden. Then when this was exposed by Mr. Ijaz, they tried to portray him as a kook.

Remember this the next time either the Rapist or the Beast holds forth on Foreign Affairs.
17 posted on 03/04/2003 7:42:21 AM PST by Leto
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To: Lyford
To all:

Who is this guy?

What do we know about him beyond what we see of him on Fox? He looks like he really has the inside scoop.

18 posted on 03/04/2003 7:43:11 AM PST by InterceptPoint
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To: RightOnTheLeftCoast
"KSM's arrest therefore represented an opportunity, if done right, to dismantle the Middle East retaliation infrastructure before launching the war to disarm Saddam. Pentagon planners have long fretted about the cauldrons of fire al Qaeda's Saddam-enabled retaliation cells could unleash on weak Middle East governments if and when the U.S. decided to move against Iraq."

I posted here last week that something besides the military was holding up this Iraq invasion, and that it was probably related to Ridge or Homeland Defense. This confirms this in a roundabout way. Iraq is now being delayed while we cut these guys off at the knees.

19 posted on 03/04/2003 7:56:07 AM PST by LS
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To: InterceptPoint
Mansoor Ijaz is founder and chairman of The Crescent Partnerships, a family of New York investment partnerships between Ijaz, Lt. Gen. James Abrahamson (USAF Ret), former director of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, and Turkey's Global Group, a major Abu Dhabi investment group and the heir of a prominent European shipping family. Former CIA Director, Amb. James Woolsey, serves as vice chairman of Crescent's Board of Governors.

Crescent specializes in the use of quantitative modeling techniques to manage investment portfolios. Crescent's MENARA family of private equity funds, currently in formation, focuses on three strategic investment sectors: national security technologies, including internet security, satellite imaging and air and seaport cargo security, telecommunications, and real estate acquisitions. The firm is headquartered in New York with partner offices in London, Abu Dhabi and Ankara. Ijaz founded Crescent in 1991.

Ijaz received his SM degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985 where he trained as a neuro-mechanical engineer in the joint MIT-Harvard Medical School Medical Engineering Medical Physics Program. He received his bachelor's degree Magna Cum Laude from the University of Virginia in 1983, where he majored in Physics. He has applied the extensive modeling experience he
gained at MIT and Harvard to develop The CARAT System, Crescent's proprietary currency, interest rate and equity risk management system.

Away from Crescent's daily business affairs, Ijaz is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and appears frequently on a variety of financial and political news programs for CNN, CNN International, Fox News, BBC, Germany's RDF TV, Japan's NHK, ABC, NBC, MSNBC and CNBC. He has commented for Public Broadcasting System's Newshour with Jim Lehrer and ABC News Nightline with Ted Koppel, and served as Foreign Affairs and Terrorism Analyst for Fox News during 2002.

Ijaz has been featured twice in BARRON'S Currency Roundtable discussions. He has also contributed to the editorial pages of London's Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, Newsweek International, The Christian Science Monitor, USA Today and the Times of India.

As a private American citizen, Ijaz negotiated Sudan's counterterrorism offer to the Clinton administration*** in April 1997 and proposed the framework for a ceasefire of hostilities between Indian security forces and Kashmiri separatists in the disputed Kashmir region in August 2000.

Ijaz's father, the late Dr. Mujaddid Ahmed Ijaz, a prominent American physicist, was an early pioneer in developing the intellectual infrastructure of Pakistan's nuclear program. Ijaz earned All-American weightlifting status while attending the University of Virginia. Born in Florida in 1961 and raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Ijaz lives in New York City today with his family.

From South Asian Journalists Assn. website.

*** He negotiated to get OBL handed over to X42, who thought he was a kook and ignored the transaction.
20 posted on 03/04/2003 7:57:08 AM PST by Hillary's Lovely Legs (Take time to smile, it will change your whole attitude)
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