"The al-Zawahiri Fiasco"

Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, March 23, 2004

It featured all the trappings of a glorified video
game. Thousands of Pakistani army and paramilitary
troops played the hammer. Hundreds of US troops and
Special Forces, plus the elite commando 121, were ready
to play the anvil across the border in Afghanistan.
What was supposed to be smashed in between was "high-
value target" Ayman al-Zawahiri, as Pakistani President
General Pervez Musharraf enthusiastically bragged --
with no hard evidence -- to an eager CNN last Thursday.
But what happened to this gigantic piece of psy-ops?
Nothing. And for a very simple reason: al-Qaeda's brain
and Osama bin Laden's deputy was never there in the
first place.And even if he was, as Taliban-connected
sources in Peshawar told Asia Times Online, he would
choose to die as a martyr rather than be captured and
paraded as a US trophy.

It now appears that world public opinion fell victim to
a Musharraf-inspired web of disinformation. In the
early stages of the battle west of Wana in South
Waziristan, Taliban spokesman Abdul Samad, speaking by
satellite telephone from Kandahar province in
Afghanistan, was quick to say that talk of al-Zawahiri
being cornered was "just propaganda by the US coalition
and by the Pakistani army to weaken Taliban morale".
Subsequently, Peshawar sources were quoting al-Qaeda
operatives from inside Saudi Arabia as saying that both
bin Laden and al-Zawahiri had left this part of the
tribal areas as early as January.

On the Afghan side, General Atiquallah Ludin at the
Defense Ministry in Kabul was saying that "al-Qaeda
cannot escape or enter Afghan soil". But by this time
the majority of the mujahideen previously based in
South Waziristan had already managed to cross back to
Paktika province in Afghanistan -- mostly to areas
around Urgun, Barmal and Gayan. This rugged,
mountainous territory is quintessentially Taliban. Many
local Pashtun tribals don't even know who (Afghan
president) Hamid Karzai is.

It would have been almost impossible for the mujahideen
to cross to Paktika after the start of operation
"hammer and anvil". By last Saturday, Mohammed Gaus,
district mayor of Orgun -- where the Americans keep a
base -- was saying that "the Pakistanis seem to have
closed the border". The Americans have a main base in
the village of Shkin, in Paktika, less than 25
kilometers to the west of the battleground cordoned off
by the Pakistani army in South Waziristan. This base
accommodates not only the US Army, but contingents of
the Central Intelligence Agency and Special Forces, as
well as members of commando 121 itself (the "anvil"
side). On the "hammer" side, the Americans supply the
Pakistani army with satellite photos, intelligence
collected by drones and listening stations, and have
installed electronic sensors and radars along the
border.

All the time the Pakistani government and army were
insisting that the US did not put any pressure on them
to launch operation hammer and anvil. So according to
military spokesman Major General Sultan, it was "just a
coincidence" that US Secretary of State Colin Powell
was in Islamabad at the height of the operation, and
that Pakistan was being rewarded with the status of
major non-North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally.

High-value target Musharraf swore that his commanders
told him a "high-value target" was in the South
Waziristan tribal area, based on American intelligence.
Washington believed it, quoting Pakistani intelligence.
In the end, it was local intelligence that revealed
that the target may in fact be Tahir Yuldash, who took
control of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan after its
leader Juma Namangani was killed by American bombing in
November 2001 in Afghanistan.

Yuldash may be the man in charge of coordinating all
Central Asian al-Qaeda and/or affiliated jihadis:
Uzbeks, Tajiks, Uighurs from China's Xinjiang and
Chechens. He is suspected of being holed up in South
Waziristan ever since he escaped the American bombing
of Tora Bora in December 2001. Alongside him there is
one Danyar, a Chechen commander, and of course hundreds
of Pashtun tribals.

Sources in Peshawar told Asia Times Online that the
"high value target" actually managed to escape in the
early stages of the battle last week in a black,
bullet- proof Toyota Land Cruiser with tinted windows
from a fortress-cum-farmhouse right in the middle of
the battlefield, in the village of Kolosha. These
sources also confirm the Taliban claim that al-Zawahiri
may have left South Waziristan as early as January and
no later than early February, when word was rife all
over the tribal areas about the upcoming spring
offensive.

The connection in Wana of Cobra helicopters shooting
missiles and a local hospital receiving a stream of
civilian victims, including women and children,
inevitably led the coalition of six religious parties,
the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, which won last year's
elections in the tribal areas, to furiously accuse the
Musharraf government. Many people believe that the
operation has been undertaken at the insistence of the
US, and as such it is tearing national unity apart.
Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the firebrand leader of the
Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI), said this would lead to "more
terrorism in reaction to the persecution of innocent
civilians". And Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, who directs
one of the most important madrassas (religious schools)
in Karachi and who is close to the Taliban, added that
"it will only create more hatred in the country, and it
won't solve the problem of terrorism".

The way in which Islamabad has alienated the Pashtun
tribals suggests that the whole operation may end up as
a complete fiasco. The Pakistanis had to arrest the
wives of some mujahideen to extract some kind of
intelligence. Peshawar sources tell Asia Times Online
that average Pashtun tribals have been the main victims
all along. Local trucks and minibuses have been nowhere
to be seen for days. The roads are sealed. Electricity
has been cut off. Families fled heavy bombing of
"strategic targets" -- on foot for dozens of kilometers.
Villagers were hit by mortar fire. The Pakistani army
used 15 Cobra helicopters, two F-17 fighters and dozens
of artillery batteries. Contrary to Islamabad's
version, the mujahideen were not cornered in one area --
but in eight villages around the cities of Wana and
Azam Warsak: Kluusha, Karzi Kot, Klotay, Gua Khua, Zera
Lead, Sarahgor, Sesion Warzak and Wazagonday.

Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, chairperson of
the Pakistan People's Party, grumbled that elected
tribal leaders were not consulted about an operation
which had been planned for three months: "Every high
value target was allowed to escape months in advance
while the tribal population was used as a sacrificial
lamb to satisfy the power lust of the regime." Benazir
added that "even the international media were duped
into believing that al- Qaeda number two Ayman al-
Zawahiri was besieged, when in fact Chechen and Uzbek
fighters were said to be holed in the area".

The roughly 100 "suspects" captured so far by thousands
of Pakistani troops amount to an overwhelming majority
of Pashtun tribesmen -- with a few low-ranking Chechens
and Uzbek fighters and certainly no high-value Arab
jihadis thrown in the mix. Word in Peshawar is that the
Pashtun fighters and jihadis had much better
intelligence than the Pakistani military. Peshawar
sources estimate that less than 10 jihadis were killed,
as opposed to almost 70 Pakistani soldiers and
paramilitary troops.

A graphic sign of failure is that Islamabad was
actually forced to negotiate after a de facto
ceasefire. Three hundred to 500 mostly Pashtun
tribals, along with some low-level jihadis and Taliban,
do remain surrounded. Islamabad's line is that tribes
protecting "foreign terrorists" have no option but to
surrender them, or else die fighting. Coincidentally,
General John Abizaid, head of the US Central Command,
happens to be in Islamabad at the moment on a semi-
secret visit.

Any remaining "high value target" in Wana may have
escaped by now -- in a scheme not totally dissimilar to
bin Laden's spectacular escape from Tora Bora in
December 2001. At that time, hundreds of Arab and
Chechen mujahideen put up very strong resistance in the
frontline, while the "Sheikh" escaped to the Pakistani
tribal areas using, among other means, a few tunnels.
So it's no surprise that the Pakistanis have now also
"discovered" a two kilometer long tunnel under the
houses of the most-wanted tribal, Nek Muhammad. The
tunnel may be instrumental in covering the Pakistani
army's backs.

An occupation army As Islamabad has declared the tribal
areas a no-go area for the foreign press -- unless in
short, highly-choreographed escorted tours -- it's
crucial to get a feeling of the terrain. There's no
"border" to speak of between both Waziristan tribal
agencies, North and South, and the Afghan province of
Paktika. During the anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s,
Waziristan was a prime mujahideen base. Afghan jihadis
married locally and became residents, along with their
families. During the Afghan war in 2001, al-Qaeda
jihadis also took local Pashtun wives. This means that
every mujahideen -- Arab, Afghan and Arab-Afghan --
enjoys popular support.

As in most latitudes in the tribal areas, most people
carry a tribal-made Kalashnikov and have been raised in
madrassas maintained by the JUI. Musharraf may now call
them terrorists, but the fact remains that every
mujahideen is and will be respectfully regarded by the
locals as a soldier of Islam. Moreover, al-Qaeda
jihadis who settled in Waziristan have managed to
seduce tribals young and old alike with an irresistible
deluge of Pakistani rupees, weapons and Toyota Land
Cruisers.

The Pakistani army is regarded as an occupation army.
No wonder: it entered Waziristan for the first time in
history, in the summer of 2002. These Pakistani
soldiers are mostly Punjabi. They don't speak Pashto
and don't know anything about the complex Pashtun
tribal code. In light of all this, the presence of the
Pakistani army in these tribal areas in the name of the
"war on terror" cannot but be regarded as an American
intervention. These tribes have never been subdued.
They may even spell Musharraf's doom.

What disappeared from the news Musharraf's version of
"wag the dog" -- call it "wag the terrorist" -- may have
served to divert world attention from the tragedy in
Iraq to the real "war on terror". It was great public
relations for Washington, as the hunt for the invisible
"high value target" buried the fact that two Iraqi
journalists working for the al-Arabiya network were
killed by the US military; it buried Amnesty
International reminding everyone that 10,000 Iraqi
civilians have died because of the war; and it buried
weekend protests against the war in the US and Western
Europe.

Musharraf himself has a lot to answer for. Why did his
government and the Pakistani army not arrest al-Qaeda
jihadis after Tora Bora in December 2001, when
everybody knew they were in the tribal areas? It could
have been only a matter of military incompetence. But
the word in Peshawar is different: then, this was part
of an American-organized covert ops destined to keep
the al- Qaeda leadership alive, the main reason for the
"war on terror". Today, the "war on terror" still has
no credibility in these parts because it allows
civilians to be terrorized -- just as has happened in
Wana.

As Asia Times Online has warned (More fuel to
Pakistan's simmering fire) what Islamabad has bought
with hammer and anvil is not just the resentment of a
particular tribal clan, but a full-fledged tribal
revolt. Without the support of tribal leaders and
mullahs, there's no way that Musharraf can play George
W Bush's local cop in the "war on terror" to
Washington's satisfaction. Yet he risks civil war in
trying to do just this.