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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1 0 <strong>Frontline</strong> <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong><br />
<strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>i security forces had arrested several other al-Qaeda<br />
operatives in subsequent raids on suspected terrorist hideouts in<br />
different parts of the city, but missed the man they wanted to capture<br />
most: KSM. <strong>The</strong>y had to wait another five months before they could<br />
get hold of him.<br />
In the first week of February 2003, <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>i police and intelligence<br />
personnel finally nabbed KSM from a house in a middle-class<br />
neighbourhood in <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>’s western border city, Quetta. 35 But his<br />
detention was kept secret for a month to buy time to track down other<br />
terrorists. On 3 March, <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>i authorities announced that they had<br />
arrested KSM from a house in Rawalpindi’s Westridge district. <strong>The</strong><br />
delay and deliberate concealing of the actual place of arrest had borne<br />
fruit: the subsequent capture of a dozen other al-Qaeda militants.<br />
<strong>The</strong> pre-dawn raid on the Westridge house of a woman leader of<br />
<strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>’s largest mainstream <strong>Islam</strong>ic political party, Jamaat-i-<strong>Islam</strong>i,<br />
produced another important catch: Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, a Saudi<br />
Arabian national, who was accused of bankrolling the 11 September<br />
attacks. Hawsawi, who initially identified himself as a Somali,<br />
allegedly funded the hijackers through bank accounts in the United<br />
Arab Emirates. He was also believed to be al-Zawahiri’s financier, as<br />
well as being indicted in the United States on two counts of terrorism.<br />
In Quetta, the police also nabbed Mohammed Abdur Rehman, the son<br />
of the blind Egyptian cleric convicted in New York in 1995. 36<br />
KSM was apparently tracked by intelligence agencies for four weeks<br />
before his capture. <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>i security forces had earlier captured his<br />
two young sons, Yousuf al-Khalid and Abed al-Khalid. <strong>The</strong>y were<br />
detained in September 2003, after a raid on an apartment in Karachi’s<br />
Defence Housing Society, which was used by KSM as a hideout. <strong>The</strong><br />
al-Qaeda operational chief narrowly escaped arrest, while his sons<br />
were found hiding in a third-floor, two-bedroom apartment. <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>i<br />
authorities believed that the arrest of his young sons would force KSM<br />
to surrender. It didn’t happen. <strong>The</strong> boys were reportedly flown to the<br />
USA after their father’s arrest. Among the items found in his possession<br />
was a photograph of a smiling KSM with his arms around his sons. 37<br />
KSM’s capture was the biggest coup in the US war on terror. Ranking<br />
number three in the al-Qaeda leadership, he was also the head of<br />
the military operations wing of the terrorist network. His central role<br />
in al-Qaeda planning began to unfurl after his arrest and interrogation.<br />
Many of the past decade’s major terrorist incidents – and some<br />
recently interrupted plots – were linked to a single, clannish al-Qaeda