Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak
Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak
Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak
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War Comes Home<br />
A key recruiter for al-Qaeda, Abu Zubaydah was appointed as chief<br />
of operations by bin Laden in 1996. 25 He was responsible for training<br />
thousands of <strong>Islam</strong>ic militants in al-Qaeda training camps in eastern<br />
Afghanistan. When bin Laden and his inner circle planned an attack, it<br />
was Abu Zubaydah who would contact the cells in the field to conduct<br />
them. Bin Laden put him in charge of the millennium plot to bomb the<br />
Radisson Hotel in Jordan and the Los Angeles International Airport on<br />
New Year’s Day, 2000. He had also been in operational control of the<br />
attack on the USS Cole in October 2000. US investigators believed Abu<br />
Zubaydah knew names, faces and locations of al-Qaeda operatives<br />
the world over. His arrest came as a gold mine of information to the<br />
investigators and led to the arrest of Jose Padilla, the Hispanic American<br />
arrested in Chicago in May 2002, who was believed to be coming to<br />
the United States to let off a ‘dirty’, or radiological, bomb.<br />
<strong>The</strong> al-Qaeda leader had developed strong connections with<br />
<strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>i <strong>Islam</strong>ic militants groups during his stay in Peshawar, where<br />
he recruited and vetted al-Qaeda volunteers before sending them for<br />
training in Afghanistan. <strong>The</strong> house he was occupying in Faisalabad,<br />
was arranged by a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba. <strong>The</strong> central Punjab city<br />
had been a stronghold of the group and it was quite apparent that the<br />
al-Qaeda leader chose the city to set up his operational headquarters.<br />
Several members of the outlawed outfit were among those captured<br />
during the raid. 26 <strong>The</strong> fact that LeT had strong connections with Wahabi<br />
Saudi clerics may also be one of the reasons for the strengthening<br />
of its bond with al-Qaeda. <strong>The</strong> capture of Abu Zubaydah came as<br />
a serious blow to al-Qaeda, but the network nevertheless continued<br />
to operate in <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>. 27 <strong>The</strong> terrorist group was battered but not<br />
beaten. A motley collection of old hands and new recruits from among<br />
<strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>i militants had managed to form a nucleus that pushed forward<br />
with plans to attacks targets, both inside and outside <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>. <strong>The</strong><br />
country’s largest city and its commercial capital, Karachi, had turned<br />
into al-Qaeda’s new operational headquarters. Even before 9/11, the<br />
city had been used by the militants as a transit point to Afghanistan.<br />
Several hijackers involved in the attacks in New York and Washington<br />
had passed through the city.<br />
Scores of al-Qaeda operatives took shelter in the sprawling metropolis.<br />
Mainly rich Arab nationals, better at blending in, vanished into the<br />
mega-city of 12 million on the Arabian Sea. According to a senior police<br />
official, they were in lower-class and middle-class neighbourhoods –<br />
they were everywhere. Endless clusters of apartments, teeming slums<br />
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