New
Delhi, 05 November 2004
President Bush has romped home for a
second term and perhaps continuity is best for the
world even if USA's operations in Iraq are going
haywire and the cost to USA will exceed $85 billion
per year till it decides to opt out. It appears to
be a no win situation in this day and age and the
point that should interest Indians is the support
that Bush is likely to continue to give Pakistan.
The Indian Air Chief's statement
that Pakistan Air Force is a pygmy is interesting
and needs to be watched as in the next breath he has
stated that USA is supplying F-16s to Pakistan and
if they be the Block 50 then the Indian Air Force
will have some competition. USA has just supplied
the latest Block 60 F-16s to UAE even though its own
Air Force does not have the Block 60. Pakistan has
close links with the UAE Air Force.
Pakistan's PM Shaukat Aziz is
visiting Nepal and has promised arms to Nepal ––
another interesting development. The article posted
below is another pointer as Pakistan's upper house
passed a bill allowing General Pervez Musharraf to
remain both president and army chief until 2007. The
bill will come into effect on 31 December
Guns And Leaflets, But Still No Sign Of The Enemy
By Nick Meo on the border of
Afghanistan and Pakistan
Courtesy:
The Independent (U.K.) 01 November 2004
The army guy was scattering handfuls
of Osama bin Laden leaflets from his Humvee as the
heavily-armed convoy bumped through a mud brick
village on the way to the Pakistan border, in the
unlikely hope that somebody with information would
find them.
The leaflets, designed by a psy-ops
team in Fire Base Salerno, did not mention the $25m
(£13.6m) reward but bore sinister pictures of Bin
Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the Taliban
leader, Mullah Omar, looking like evil zombies from
a horror film. The caption in Pashtun mocked them
for drawing out a war they could not win.
"Nobody thinks Bin Laden is in
Afghanistan," said the soldier, whose job was
to make friends with Afghan villagers in the hope of
useful intelligence. "But a lot of people go to
and fro across the border. Maybe somebody who knows
something we want to know will pick up a
leaflet."
He works with a deeply frustrated US
Marines unit. After six months in Afghanistan, Lima
Company had still to engage in a firefight with the
enemy, based tantalisingly in Pakistan just across
the border they cannot cross. Their mission was to
drive from their base in the city of Khost to border
checkpoint No 3, a series of hilltop forts ringed
with barriers and razor-wire commanding a main
border crossing to Afghanistan.
A Marines officer spat chewing
tobacco in the direction of Pakistan. "We all
know al-Qa'ida and the Taliban are in there,"
he said. "Maybe that's where Bin Laden is
hiding. We would love to go in there, track them
down, and end the war here and now. But for
political reasons we can't."
Waziristan, a wild tribal territory
where Islamabad barely has control, is among the
most likely hideouts for Bin Laden, who is still
along the border, the US military in Kabul
maintains, after he resurfaced in a video message to
America's electorate last week. But after three
years of the biggest manhunt in history, the border
has been extensively searched and the possibility of
Bin Laden being in a different place looks more
likely.
The Islamist slums of Karachi or
mountainous Pakistani Kashmir, the base for a
decade-long jihad against India, are other
possibilities that the FBI's manhunters are now
believed to be looking at. Some analysts believe he
may be in Yemen or another African state. But a
bloody guerrilla war the outside world hardly sees
ripples along the border. Weeks ago, Commander Sakhi
Rahman's militia force was attacked at border
checkpoint No 3. One officer lost an arm and another
was wounded. Several Taliban attackers were killed.
Pakistani militia who guard the frontier a few
hundred yards away helped the Taliban recover their
dead and wounded, the commander said, and his men
once killed a Pakistani militiaman who had joined in
an attack.
Commander Rahman had been instructed
not to speak to the press by shadowy forces from
Chapman, the US base for the CIA, special forces and
other publicity-shy warriors who recruited, trained
and armed the 1,000-strong mercenary army manning
the border forts. But he spoke anyway. "Our
intelligence told us the attackers were Pakistanis
paid 5,000 rupees (£44) each. They were Haqqani's
men. Everybody knows he lives in Miram Shah. Why
don't the Pakistanis arrest him?"
Jalaluddin Haqqani, who has a
$250,000 bounty on his head, is a veteran warlord
who fought the Soviets with US-supplied weapons and
is now allied with al-Qa'ida. He has become the
biggest thorn in the side of Khost, but some believe
he may be semi-retired in Saudi Arabia.
US officers say Haqqani's network of
madrassas (Islamist schools) in Pakistan send young,
brainwashed assassins across to kill government
officials, ambush US supply lorries, and mount mass
attacks on government positions that often end in
the deaths of badly trained guerrillas. Commander
Rahman said: "Pakistan says it is helping
America but it is not. Pakistan is two-faced."
General
Kilbaz Sherzai, an old communist intelligence chief
trained in Frunze Military Academy, the Soviet
Sandhurst, shares that view. He now works for the
Americans in Khost and has just survived a suicide
attack by an inept attacker. "The boy was sent
by Haqqani," the general said. He is convinced
the capture of Haqqani could lead to the terror
mastermind. "He is a friend of Bin Laden and
has many links with al-Qa'ida," he said.
"I'm sure he knows where Osama is. We don't
know why Pakistan doesn't arrest him."
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