Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

The Tribal Warriors
in November 2001. Yaldashev had since worked with al-Qaeda and
the Taliban leadership, carrying out raids on US and allied forces in
Afghanistan. He was very popular among the militants because of his
leadership qualities and fiery speeches. He was badly wounded during
the raid on his compound, but managed to escape the dragnet. 20
The militants struck again a few days later when they ambushed
an army caravan near Sarwakai village, massacring some two dozen
soldiers and capturing several others. Not a single soldier in the
convoy escaped. Government forces also lost a number of military
vehicles and equipment. The charred, twisted steel scattered over the
winding roads illustrated the ferocity of the rebel attack. In the first
couple of weeks the military had lost more than 120 soldiers. Pashtun
paramilitary soldiers deserted the government forces in droves as the
offensive against al-Qaeda and their tribal supporters, descended into
chaos. 21 Those who belonged to the local tribes had refused to fire on
their brethren. Some of them, perhaps, had also been inspired by a
videotape recorded by al-Zawahiri in which he had called Musharraf
a traitor and urged Pakistani troops to disobey the order. ‘Fight the
supporters of the devil,’ he exhorted.
The tape also reinforced the suspicion that the al-Qaeda’s number
two had been hiding in the border areas protected by sympathetic
tribesmen. The videotape caused serious embarrassment to Musharraf
who, just a few days before, had claimed that his forces had encircled
‘a high-value target’. He tried to play down al-Zawahiri’s ranting.
‘Zawahiri is on the run. For heaven’s sake, it is just one tape. Let’s not
get excited,’ he told an American TV network. 22 . But he was certainly
a worried man.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, a bespectacled, 52-year-old eye surgeon, had
emerged from a privileged upbringing in Egypt to become one of the
world’s most wanted terrorists. As a teenager, al-Zawahiri worked
his way through various Islamic movements to overthrow the secular
Egyptian government. In 1960 he joined an Islamic revolutionary
group the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been founded in the
1920s. 23 He later ended up with an Islamist jihad group, which had
masterminded the assassination of Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat, in
1981. Al-Zawahiri was arrested in the crackdown on Islamic militants
that followed Sadat’s murder. Although he could not be directly linked
with the assassination plot, he was handed down a three-year prison
sentence. The jail experience further radicalized him. In the 1980s, al-
Zawahiri relocated himself to the Pakistani city, Peshawar, and joined
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