Original source URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/world/asia/30pakistan.html December 30, 2007 Local Pakistani Militants Boost Qaeda Threat By CARLOTTA GALL ISLAMABAD, Pakistan ‹ The Qaeda network accused by Pakistan¹s government of killing the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto is increasingly made up not of foreign fighters but of homegrown Pakistani militants bent on destabilizing the country, analysts and security officials here say. In previous years, Pakistani militants directed their energies against American and NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan and avoided clashes with the Pakistani Army. But this year they have very clearly expanded their ranks and turned to a direct confrontation with the Pakistani security forces while also aiming at political figures like Ms. Bhutto, the former prime minister who died when a suicide bomb exploded as she left a political rally on Thursday. According to American officials in Washington, an already steady stream of threat reports spiked in recent months. Many concerned possible plots to kill prominent Pakistani leaders, including Ms. Bhutto, President Pervez Musharraf and Nawaz Sharif, another opposition leader. ³Al Qaeda right now seems to have turned its face toward Pakistan and attacks on the Pakistani government and Pakistani people,² Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters in Washington on Dec. 21. The expansion of Pakistan¹s own militants, with their fortified links to Al Qaeda, presents a deeply troubling development for the Bush administration and its efforts to stabilize this volatile nuclear-armed country. It is also one that many in Pakistan have been loath to admit, but that Ms. Bhutto had begun to acknowledge in her many public statements about the greatest threat to her country being in religious extremism and terrorism. Those warnings have now been borne out with her death and in the turmoil that has followed it and shaken Pakistan¹s political fault lines. Rioting over the last two days has left at least 38 people dead and 53 injured, and cost millions of dollars of damage to businesses, vehicles and government buildings, according an Interior Ministry spokesman. Protesters have accused the government of failing to protect Ms. Bhutto, or even conspiring to kill her. On Saturday, Mr. Sharif, now the country¹s most prominent opposition figure, ventured to the political stronghold of his assassinated rival to lay a wreath on her grave, but also to make common cause against President Musharraf and the Bush administration¹s support of him. The government has tried to deflect that anger, blaming militants linked to Al Qaeda, specifically Baitullah Mehsud, for having masterminded the attack. But on Saturday, through a spokesman, Mr. Mehsud denied he was responsible and dismissed the allegations, adding fuel to the notion of a government conspiracy. ³Neither Baitullah Mehsud nor any of his associates were involved in the assassination of Benazir, because raising your hand against women is against our tribal values and customs,² the spokesman, Maulavi Omar, said in a telephone call from the tribal region of South Waziristan. ³Only those people who stood to gain politically are involved in Benazir¹s murder,² he said. One of Pakistan¹s leading newspapers, The Daily Times, noted Saturday that such denials were a common tactic used to obscure the origins of the militants¹ attacks, and in particular to extend the myth that the bombings are the work of foreign elements, rather than of Pakistanis. Al Qaeda in Pakistan now comprises not just foreigners but Pakistani tribesmen from border regions, as well as Punjabis and Urdu speakers and members of banned sectarian and Sunni extremists groups, Najam Sethi, editor of The Daily Times, wrote in a front-page analysis. ³Al Qaeda is now as much a Pakistani phenomenon as it is an Arab or foreign element,² he wrote. Senior American intelligence officials said all credible threat information in recent weeks had been passed to Pakistani authorities, mainly through the United States Embassy in Islamabad. But the officials said they were not aware of any specific reports of an attempt on Ms. Bhutto¹s life in Rawalpindi. A senior American intelligence official said it was clear from his reading of recent threat reports that ³the political process was not going to go untouched,² adding that militants almost surely would go to any length ³to create political disarray.² And while Ms. Bhutto had perhaps the longest list of enemies among Pakistan¹s most prominent politicians, the official said: ³It almost didn¹t matter which one was attacked ‹ Musharraf, Bhutto or Sharif. The militants were looking for multiple target sets, whether in the capital area, which would carry more weight, or in Karachi or Peshawar.² In the face of that danger, American lawmakers pressed for tighter government security around Ms. Bhutto. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Delaware Democrat who heads the Foreign Relations Committee and who is running for president, released a letter last week that he and two Senate colleagues had written to Mr. Musharraf at Ms. Bhutto¹s request, urging him to increase her security. The letter, written six days after the Oct. 18 bombing attempt on Ms. Bhutto¹s life, urged Mr. Musharraf to provide her ³the full level of security support afforded to any former prime minister,² including ³bomb-proof vehicles and jamming equipment.² After Ms. Bhutto¹s death, Mr. Biden said in a statement, ³The failure to protect Ms. Bhutto raises a lot of hard questions for the government and security services that must be answered.² But a Defense Department official said Saturday, ³I don¹t know how foolproof you can make any security when people are willing to kill themselves.² The tribes on the border have a long history of fighting invading armies. But since 2001, when Qaeda and Taliban forces fled the American intervention in Afghanistan and took refuge in Pakistan¹s tribal areas, the Pakistani militants have steadily grown in strength and boldness. Today they have been bolstered by the foreigners among them. Those include a smaller number of hard-core Arabs, like Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda¹s second in command, as well as a larger number of Uzbeks, Tartars and Tajiks who have influence them to take on new agendas, Pakistani security officials familiar with the region said. The Arabs in particular have brought money and fighting and explosives expertise, as well as ideology that includes religious justifications of tactics like suicide bombings and beheadings, which Afghans and Pakistanis had not used before, they said. More and more, those tribes and foreign networks have overlapping operations and agendas. ³The country is facing the gravest challenge from these terrorists and extremist elements,² Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, the director of the National Crisis Management Cell and main spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said Friday as he accused Al Qaeda of Ms. Bhutto¹s assassination. ³They are systematically targeting our state institutions in order to destabilize the country.² Mr. Mehsud, he said, was of the ³same brand of Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists,² and was ³behind most of the recent terrorist attacks that have taken place in Pakistan.² Some security officials in the North-West Frontier Province have warned, however, that it has become the norm for the government to blame Mr. Mehsud for just about any attack, without providing real evidence. Mr. Mehsud is in fact one commander in a broader terrorist network who runs just one of an estimated five groups that train and dispatch suicide bombers from Pakistan¹s isolated tribal areas, according to officials. Another man known to be sending out suicide bombers is Qari Zafar, a militant from southern Punjab who was connected to the banned Sunni extremist group Sipa-e-Sahaba and then Jaish-e-Muhammad. Mr. Zafar escaped capture in Karachi and is now based in South Waziristan, where he trains insurgents on how to rig roadside bombs and vests for suicide bombings, a former security official said. But it is Mr. Mehsud who has emerged this year as the most visible proponent of Al Qaeda¹s ambitions in Pakistan, security officials said. He has claimed to have hundreds of suicide bombers ready to attack government and military targets. Barely two years ago Mr. Mehsud, 32, was just a Pashtun tribesman who did not register on the radar screen of the intelligence services or government officials. He is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan in the 1990s, when he trained and fought with the Taliban, according to one Pakistani intelligence official. He became a follower of Abdullah Mehsud, the one-legged commander who was captured when fighting with the Taliban in 2001 in Afghanistan and detained by the United States at its military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Abdullah Mehsud was later released and took up the fight against American forces in Afghanistan from his home base in South Waziristan. Both Abdullah and Baitullah share the name of the Mehsud of South Waziristan, a large warrior Pashtun tribe that is renowned for never being pacified by the British forces. Abdullah Mehsud was killed in July by Pakistani forces in Zhob, a district south of the tribal areas in the province of Baluchistan. But even before then, Baitullah Mehsud had been promoted over him by the Taliban leadership. Baitullah Mehsud is now believed to be responsible for some of the most spectacular and damaging attacks inside Pakistan in recent months, including suicide bombings against army and intelligence targets as well as prominent politicians like Ms. Bhutto. He has also been identified by officials in Afghanistan as one of the main sources of the suicide bombers who carry out attacks there. But Mr. Mehsud¹s master strike came at the end of July when he captured nearly 300 soldiers who were escorting a supply convoy through the Mehsud lands in Waziristan. He beheaded three soldiers and demanded that the government withdraw from his area and cease operations against militants. It took the government two months of negotiations to win the release of the soldiers. Only on Nov. 3 did it do so. As part of the deal the government handed over 25 of Mr. Mehsud¹s men on the same day that President Musharraf imposed emergency rule, saying he needed the extra powers to combat terrorists. Since then, however, the government, wary of the retaliatory attacks Mr. Mehsud can employ, appears to have done little to rein him in. He now leads Tehrik-i-Taliban, a newly formed coalition of Islamic militants committed to waging holy war against the Pakistani government. The government has outlawed the group but not moved against it. The army has instead concentrated its efforts in recent weeks on clearing militants from the Swat Valley. That region is some distance from the tribal areas on the border, and the fight there an indication of just how far the militant influence has spread. Pakistani officials who have worked in the tribal areas say that it is still possible to contain the threat of someone like Mr. Mehsud through tribal pressure, if he can be separated from the foreign elements. ³The only problem is these foreigners,² the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. ³You remove these foreigners and the rest is no problem.² Yet to remove the foreigners, namely a small number of Arab leaders, who are well protected and well hidden, from among the tribesmen is a task that Pakistan so far has failed to do and according to some may not be capable of. ³That can only be done with an operation,² the official said. Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington. 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