MoverOver Al-Qaida..

[muse]

We have advised our readers about the role of the Jamaat e Islami with regard to Al-Qaida and the role of the Jamaat e Ulama e Pakistan with regard to the Taliban, both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan -- Judge for yourselves if we have been wrong or mistaken or ...

Read for yourselves if our advice that the roots of extremist ideology in Pakistan are the evil ideology of Maududi and Wahabism and whether we have been wrong, or....

From todays DailyTimes:


Jundullah, the new al Qaeda

By Ali K Chishti

Investigations by Daily Times have revealed serious concerns, as according to one official, the peace in Karachi is under “imminent threat” from the newly re-organised Jundallah, which has been working in the city since 2003.

An intelligence official who had been on a hunt went as far as to claim, “Jundullah is the new al Qaeda in Pakistan.”

Daily Times can confirm, while talking to various sources including militant commanders, that the attacks in Lahore, which killed 35 people and injured at least 250, was not just a case of sectarian violence, but was planned and executed by sub-contractors of al Qaeda to spread the insurgency to urban areas of Pakistan where, according to one official, “the new Jundullah and old LeJ were used”.

Previously, Daily Times was the first publication to report the new al Qaeda and TTP strategy to open new fronts inside urban areas of Pakistan to bring the war to “A areas of Pakistan” and divide the army’s effort to curtail these elements in FATA.

Jundullah was founded originally by Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wings and Karachi University’s student of Statistics, Attaur Rehman, who was arrested in June 2004 on charge of masterminding a series of terrorist attacks in Karachi and targeting security forces and government installations. The eldest son of a local businessman, he grew up in a middle-class neighbourhood in Karachi and worked actively for the Jamaat-e-Islami.

Rehman told his interrogators that he formed Jundullah after the arrest of top al Qaeda operatives in March, 2003, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad – the mastermind of 9/11. Jundullah later attacked Karachi Corps Commander General Ahsan Saleem Hayat, bombed a US Consulate and carried out a series of terrorist attacks, including last year’s triple bombings in an Ashura procession in Karachi.

A top intelligence chief explained, “So dangerous is Jundullah that they targeted two intelligence bureau officials who solved the Nishtar Park bombing.”

Daily Times can also reveal that the recent attack on Shia mourners in Karachi was also the work of Jundullah, who deliberately targeted the mourners at a spot where most of the shops were owned by Pashtuns, but due to good coordination between the administration, Rangers and local Shia leaders “another Bori Bazar fiasco was averted”.

On July 3, 2004, the Karachi police arrested two men after the cell phone numbers of two doctors were found in Rehman’s mobile phone memory. Dr Akmal Waheed and Dr Arshad Waheed were suspected of assisting wanted terrorists to escape from authorities and providing medical treatment to three fugitives, Abu Massab, Gul Hasan and Qassamal Sani, who were wounded in the attempt on Gen Hayat’s life.

Their arrest was kept secret for a while, which caused their family to believe that they were kidnapped for ransom.

The arrest of the Waheed brothers was made public on July 13, 2004.

Police also found out that the Waheed brothers had also treated Shahzad Bajwa, alias Abdullah, the deputy of Attaur Rehman after he sustained injuries on March 19, the same year during an attack on a mobile van of the Pakistan Rangers at Bismillah Taqi Hospital in Karachi.

The authorities claimed, “The car recovered from the accused Akmal and Arshad Waheed was the one that was hired by Rehman and which later on remained in the group’s use.”

Rehman had confessed that Akmal and Arshad had close links to him and were extending help by all means, the police spokesman said, adding that both men were active JI members and were associated with the JI’s medical wing, the Pakistan Islamic Medical Association. He said they were providing active medical treatment and shelter to top al Qaeda fugitives and had been suspected of treating Osama Bin Laden’s kidneys as well.

Both doctors were eventually acquitted on July 11, 2006 in an appeals court. Following his acquittal, Arshad shifted his activity to South Waziristan and ran a clinic in Wana. Arshad was allegedly killed in a US missile attack in the area.

Later, interestingly, al Qaeda’s media wing, Al-Sahab Media Foundation, released a third part of a series of videos entitled ‘The Protectors of the Sanctuary’. This was also the first time that al Qaeda used Urdu in there video instead of Arabic. The 40-minute compilation video commemorates Dr Arshad Waheed.

A Western diplomat concluded, “The LeJ is basically Jundullah who had not only formed ideological links with al Qaeda but is protecting al Qaeda in urban areas.”

 

[somebozo]

Jundallah is targetting Iran and its cheif was recently hanged by Iran.. With economic crisis many journalist are resorting to yellow journalism just to make fast buck..its a plain and simple formula...for he article to be popular add some Pakistan, terrorist, Al quaida, islamophobia, some BS theories and voila!

 

[muse]

The lead article uses "Daily Times can now reveal..." that is to say it say editorial approval to associate the Newspaper with the story - that says crediblity to me - but of course in Saudi Arabia, it might not.

 

[muse]

On our pages, barring a few exceptions, most of our readers express anger, horror and revulsion at acts of terrorism and attitudes that reek of extremism -- yet, do we fully understand who these people are who perpetrate these acts and are we sure we understand the motivation? - I hope the piece below will give our readers cause to reconsider some positions and to perhaps be better educated on the subject:

Profiling Pakistani jihadists
Ali K Chishti

What kind of people are rushing to join jihadi organisations? Where are they coming from? What is their family and educational background? And most importantly, what motivates them to put their lives on the line for missions that really have nothing material to do with them? What really prompts a Punjabi, Sindhi, Baloch or Pashtun to become a member of a suicide squad? Or, for that matter, what makes these people participate in far off conflicts that have no bearing on their lives, except maybe emotional attachment? What is behind their fanaticism and their commitment? How are they recruited?

All such profiling conducted by various think-tanks gives us a small hint of the demonic mindset that we are dealing with in the fight against radical Islamic terror groups. Another frightening reality that emerges from a close study of jihadis is that they do not come from any one particular education stream, family background, region or even economic background. The spirit of jihad transcends these boundaries and stereotypes. In other words, jihadis are now coming from every social, economic and cultural strata of Pakistani society. This means that our country itself has become one big Jihad Inc. The role of mullahs in motivating and recruiting young men for jihad clearly comes out when profiling jihadis but equally important is the fact that economic factors and a breakdown in traditional social structures too are motivating many people to take to jihad.

Jihad in this part of the world is seen as lending a sense of purpose to the lives of many people who otherwise would be pushovers in society. One major draw for jihadis in Pakistan is the clout a religious militant enjoys with the law enforcement agencies. A black tinted four-by-four and a suspicious number plate with occupants sporting militia-style clothing, long hair and beards is bound to arouse suspicion and get the vehicle pulled over at any check post. If you are a religious militant, however, you are simply waved through with a level of ‘respect’ unthinkable for most Pakistanis. Obviously, being above the law holds great appeal for the jobless. The militant organisation gives otherwise powerless men a strong sense of identity in an increasingly fragmented social structure.

Only recently a research paper published on the very subject reveals that a vast number of recruits come from formal schools and lack any real religious knowledge or motivation. The primary cause behind militancy, it is argued, is unemployment and poverty. There are the middle class jihadis like Shehzad Tanvir or Sheikh Omar, who has been convicted of murdering Daniel Pearl. There is a popular misconception that young Pakistani men who volunteer for jihad invariably do so out of a lack of viable economic options. This is particularly untrue in Karachi where most budding jihadis hail from middle, upper middle or even upper class families. A similar trend prevails in other large cities that, in turn, explodes another myth that Pakistan’s ‘non-state actors’ are largely confined to the country’s tribal and northern areas.

“I am proud of my son although the only regret I have is that I do not have another son to send for this noble cause,” says a middle-aged man whose only son is believed dead somewhere in Afghanistan. Another jihadi now turned tableeghi, Mehmood, who in his late 20s managed to come back to Karachi in one piece, maintains that misconceptions abound concerning the current reality in Afghanistan. He says, “Some people accuse the Taliban of retreating without informing the Pakistani and Arab mujaheedin, a move that allegedly resulted in their slaughter by the Northern Alliance. That is totally incorrect.” While pulling back, the Taliban asked all their foreign allies to withdraw with them. The Pakistani and Arab mujahideen, however, decided to keep on fighting even though they knew that they would get killed. Most of them preferred to die as they had already burnt their bridges.

One would imagine that most of those planning to take part in the holy war would be from the militant cadres of jihadi organisations. However, it has become patently obvious that this modern version of the David and Goliath fable has an emotive appeal across the spectrum of Pakistani society too. Many, even those who do not agree with the Taliban’s obscurantist version of Islam, have found inspiration in the obdurate refusal of one of the world’s poorest Muslim countries to give in to the demands of the only global superpower.

Finally, there is the myth and misconception that jihadis are only Pashtuns and Punjabis. The records provided by different jihadi organisations and research material available show that the number of martyrs from Sindh has already touched 500 in the FATA region alone. In the early 2000s, when our proxies were primarily targeted towards the east, 85 of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, 175 of Hizbul Mujahideen and 51 of Lashkar-e-Islam were Sindhi-speaking jihadis. In the case of Balochistan, the list of casualties published by various jihadi organisations shows that from 1999 to March 2002, there were 112 so-called martyrs from Balochistan, most of whom died in Afghanistan, indicating that the jihad phenomenon in Pakistan has gone viral in almost every segment of our society.

The writer is a political analyst. He can be reached at akchishti@hotmail.com

 

[fatman17]

Al Qaeda clobbered, but still a mortal threat: experts

* Former US national intelligence director says counter-terrorism efforts against organisation have put it in difficult position

PARIS: Nine years after 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks, al Qaeda, the group behind the carnage, has taken many hits but remains a formidable threat, operating from Pakistan and through support groups, experts and officials say.

The network created by Osama Bin Laden in 1988 no longer seems to be able to carry out complex attacks such as those that destroyed the World Trade Centre and damaged the Pentagon, but their masterminds are alive and at large. This fact is being celebrated as a clear victory by the terror group and its supporters. “Counter-terrorism efforts against al Qaeda have put the organisation in one of its most difficult positions since late 2001,” Dennis Blair said early this year when he was the director of National Intelligence, a US cabinet-level official. “However, while these efforts have slowed the pace of anti-US planning and hindered progress on new external operations, they have not been sufficient to stop them”. Blair added, “Until counter-terrorism pressure on al Qaeda places of refuge, key lieutenants and operative cadres outpaces the group’s ability to recover, al Qaeda will retain its capability to mount an attack.”

Pressure is above all applied through missiles fired by US drones which have hit al Qaeda and other terrorists’ “safe houses” in tribal areas near the Afghan border about 100 times since August 2008. The strikes have killed about 1,000 rebels including many of al Qaeda’s operating officers. “The network is focused on its own survival, which is closely linked with the future of its allies in Pakistan,” said Jean-Pierre Filiu, professor at Sciences Po, an elite school in Paris. “Al Qaeda-Central has become more and more Pakistani and is practically absent from Afghanistan,” said Filiu. afp