Pakistan successfully met
the US deadline of July 27-29 linked with the Democrats’
convention for nomination of Senator John Kerry as the
Presidential candidate to produce a high value target
by arresting Ahmad Khalfan Ghailani in Gujrat.
Khalfan, American believes,
got military training in Afghanistan around 1994, before
his involvement in the US embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania and Nairobi. His name was associated with the
purchase of vehicles used in the incident that killed
almost 225 people in 1998.
However, the time between
now and the forthcoming US elections is more important
for everyone. Whether it’s US President George W
Bush or the al-Qaeda figures. Senior diplomats believe
that US wants Mullah Omar or Osama Bin Laden soon after
the third anniversary of the September 11 events to improve
the current election ratings in favour of the Republicans.
In any case, it should be around October 15, 2004, to
ensure a safe re-election bid for Bush, a diplomat believes.
In the same backdrop, there
are suggestions that ongoing military operation in the
South Waziristan agency, focusing on Wana, may shift to
other places, like Chitral and sensitive transit-routes
in and around Quetta, like Qila Saifullah, Qila Ladakh
and Nokundi, which the US officials believe are being
exploited by remnants of al-Qaeda and Taliban to launch
offensive in Afghanistan against the US targets. The areas
used by various smuggling rings in the region are likely
to be targeted.
Since the military has
heightened activities in these areas, its reaction was
bound to happen in the shape of counter attacks on high
profile targets in Pakistan, as shown by the suicide attempt
on Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz, who has also been designated
as the prime minister. He was a soft target due to his
election campaign.
However, the claim by an
al-Qaeda linked Egyptian group, Islambouli Brigades has
added a new twist. Lt. Khlaed Islambouli was the leader
of the group of soldiers who assassinated Egyptian President
Anwar Saddat in 1981, soon after he signed the Camp David
Accord with Israel. His brother, Mohamed Islambouli, born
in 1955, was sentenced to death in absentia by an Egyptian
court in the "Returnees from Afghanistan" case.
A top official in Gama’s Islamyia (Islamic Group),
Islambouli was last reported to be living in Afghanistan,
and he is the head of this Islambouli Group, which claimed
responsibility of the suicide attack on Aziz.
Islambouli’s relations
with Ayman El-Zawaheri, head of the Egypt’s Islamist
Jihad group and the second most wanted al-Qaeda man, are
open secrets. "The heroic act carried out by Khaled
El- Islambouli and his brothers triggered our struggle
and call for jihad in Egypt against the regime and the
Jews," Zawaheri was quoted in an interview sometime
ago. El-Zawaheri was also among thousands who were arrested
following Sadat’s assassination. Zawaheri was released
after imprisonment, and fled the country around 1984.
Mohamed Islambouli and Zawahiri are believed to have joined
hands with Osama.
Before the assassination
of Sadat, religious groups issued a 54-page booklet titled
"The Neglected Duty" that provided an elaborate
theological justification for Sadat’s killing. Sheik
Omar Abdel-Rahman, the spiritual leader of Egypt’s
Gama’a al-Islamiya (the Islamic Group), which was
blamed to have played a role in Sadat’s assassination,
also published his book in 1987 called "A Word of
Truth." Abdel-Rahman builds on Syed Qutb’s
work and argues for the restoration of the Caliphate.
Khaled considered Sadat
an infidel, which he exhibited while killing him, by shouting:
"I have killed Pharaoh, and I do not fear death."
This sentence was widely quoted all over the world, and
his brother now is carrying the same mission. More than
2000 Egyptians are believed to have been brought in Afghanistan
with the financing from the US and all the western and
Arab allies during the Jihad days to fight against the
Soviets.
Most of the Arabs with
Osama and Egyptians with Zawahiri later formed the al-Qaeda.
The al-Qaeda group originally grew out of the Mekhtab
al Khidemat (The Services Office) organization, established
by Osama and Mohammad Atef, with offices in Afghanistan,
Pakistan (particularly in Peshawar) and the United States,
particularly at the Alkifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn,
New York during the Jihad period.
The linkage between Zawahiri
and Islambouli may prove to be more lethal, as some earlier
published reports linked the name of Egyptian doctor with
the two attempts on President General Pervez Musharraf
in December 2003. A banned religious outfit was also said
to be closely associated with the same group.
Pakistan has caught more
than 550 men out of the FBI’s most wanted list,
including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who was considered,
as the master mind of 9/11 events in Rawalpindi; Ramzi
Binalshabi, believed to be the 20th hijacker in Karachi;
and Abu Zubaida, top military strategist and master of
guerrilla warfare (Belonging to Hezbollah), was arrested
in March 2002 from Faisalabad.
