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