Category: Pakistan

Myriad of evidence is piling up about ISI’s collusion with Al_Qaeda.

Even Pasha would not have had access to the wealth of material found in the Book.

But Pakistan’s propensity for ignoring what is destroying their Nation is well-known.

It will take action ,it seems, only if the Sal himself proclaims the Truth about ISI.

The Book , a good read, lays bare the skeletons in Pakistan’s cup board.

A myriad of authors, journalists, academics and analysts have attempted to analyze what drives Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders and fighters. Syed Saleem Shahzad is the only one to have gone to their strongholds and asked them. Shahzad, a Pakistani investigative reporter, has a level of access to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban that Western journalists can only dream of. He has interviewed many top-level strategists and fighters in both movements on multiple occasions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Jordan. In Inside Al-Qaeda and the Talibanhe uses first-hand accounts and his own local knowledge to build up a convincing picture of the aims and motivation of the leaders and fighters in radical Islamic movements. This is a version of the “war on terror” that has never been told. It will fascinate anyone concerned with the strategy and tactics of the most controversial Islamic movements….

Syed Saleem Shahzad, a Pakistani investigative reporter, has a level of access to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban that Western journalists can only dream of. He has interviewed many top-level strategists and fighters in both movements on multiple occasions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Jordan. In Inside Al-Qaedaand the Taliban he uses first-hand accounts and his own local knowledge to build up a convincing and compelling picture of the aims and motivation of the leaders and fighters in radical Islamic movements.

This is a version of the ‘war on terror’ that has never been told. It will fascinate anyone concerned with the strategy and tactics of the most controversial Islamic movements…

“With Ilyas Kashmiri’s immense expertise on Indian operations, he stunned the Al-Qaeda leaders with the suggestion that expanding the war theatre was the only way to overcome the present impasse. He presented the suggestion of conducting such a massive operation in India as would bring India and Pakistan to war and with that all proposed operations against Al-Qaeda would be brought to a grinding halt. Al-Qaeda excitedly approved the attack-India proposal.”

“Ilyas Kashmiri then handed over the plan to a very able former army major Haroon Ashik, who was also a former LeT commander who was still very close with the LeT chiefs Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi and Abu Hamza. Haroon knew about a plan by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) that had been in the pipelines for several months with the official policy to drop it as it was to have been a low-profile routine proxy operation in India through LeT.”

“The former army major, with the help of Ilyas Kashmiri’s men in India, hijacked the ISI plan and turned it into the devastating attacks that shook Mumbai onNovember 26, 2008 and brought Pakistan and India to the brink of a war (a detailed account of this is presented in the next chapters). “

The book contains important correspondence and all other details that former Kashmiri Jihadi and former armed forces officials changed Al-Qaeda/Taliban’s strategic perception in South Asian war theatre….

“There has never been a full picture shown before of Al-Qaeda to a western audience. Whatever was portrayed was misleading. Thus all the decisions taken after 9/11 were wrongly directed. Intelligence services around the world pre-9/11 visualized Al-Qaeda simply as a disorganized group of mercenaries, not a sophisticated organization capable of orchestrating consequential attacks on the United States . Even when the new awareness of al-Qaeda’s capabilities dawned, the organisation’s true nature and intentions were a mystery. What remains a fact, however, is that the defeat of the United States has become an obsession with Al-Qaeda’s and it prepares its game plans accordingly.

Ideas play pivotal role in wars. But ideas alone do not provide results. A fusion of ideas and resources are necessary for success. Absence of either one can lead to failure. Al-Qaeda came into existence in late 1980s. But it took its real shape when ideas fused with resources in the middle of 1990s: with the alliance of Dr Zawahiri’s ideas and Osama bin Laden’s resources.

Six feet three inches tall, rich, and close enough to the Saudi royal family to be counted a family member, Osama was as an ‘angry young man’. 14 years ago in his native Saudi Arabia he spoke out against the kingdom for allowing western forces to use its territory after the first Gulf War. The Bin Laden family conglomerate was influential in business and highly respected in Saudi Arabia, as well as in the world business community. Family members finally persuaded Osama to appear personally before King Fahd for a royal pardon. Many important members of the Saudi royals, including Prince Turki and Prince Abdullah, tried their best to settle the dispute. But it was all to no avail.

That was the beginning of the false impression presented about bin Laden and his supporters. US intelligence agencies reported him as a Saudi dissident who had fought bravely in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s, but who was no more than a political nuisance in Saudi Arabia . In fact, Osama Bin Laden had become anti-American to the core – and anti Saudi monarchy soon after they invited the Americans troops in the first Gulf War. But he did not have an ideology nor a strategy. Most political analysts believed his initial sloganeering against America would not amount to anything. And, had he not been met up with Al-Zawahiri in 1997 it may not have. But Dr Ayman Al-Zawahiri indoctrinated Osama Bin Laden’s with the idea of armed opposition to America and gave such a spin to it that Bin Laden’s uncertain security threat for America turned into a deadly reality.”

What is Al-Qaeda upto without Bin Laden?…

“The next step was ideological fusion: to spawn Al-Qaeda’s ideological genes in Ibnul Balad (Sons of the Soil) transforming them into `Blood Brothers’. The whole of the future war was to be fought by the Ibnul Balad from which Al-Qaeda aimed to produce a new generation of Dr Ayman Al-Zawahiris, with each and every segment of their lives committed to a life-long struggle. They were to live for the movement and die for it. But before they died they were to leave another generation behind to continue the war against America . This was Al-Qaeda’s arsenal.”..

So far A-Qaeda has introduced a few leaders for example  Ilyas Kashmiri and his highly sophesticated guerrilla 313 Brigade who espoused the global Jihad.

Born in Bimbur (old Mirpur) in the Samhani Valley of Pakistan-administered Kashmir on February 10, 1964, Ilyas passed the first year of a mass communication degree at Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad. He did not continue due to his heavy involvement in jihadi activities.

The Kashmir Freedom Movement was his first exposure in the field of militancy, then the Harkat-ul Jihad-i-Islami (HUJI) and ultimately his legendary 313 Brigade. This grew into the most powerful group in South Asia and its network is strongly knitted in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, India, Nepal and Bangladesh. According to some CIA dispatches, the footprints of 313 Brigade are now in Europe and capable of the type of attack that saw a handful of militants terrorize the Indian city of Mumbai last November.

Little is documented of Ilyas’ life, and what has been reported is often contradictory. However, he is invariably described, certainly by world intelligence agencies, as the most effective, dangerous and successful guerrilla leader in the world.

He left the Kashmir region in 2005 after his second release from detention by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and headed for North Waziristan. He had previously been arrested by Indian forces, but he broke out of jail and escaped. He was then detained by the ISI as the suspected mastermind of an attack on then-president Pervez Musharraf, in 2003, but was cleared and released. The ISI then picked Ilyas up again in 2005 after he refused to close down his operations in Kashmir.

His relocation to the troubled border areas sent a chill down spines in Washington as they realized that with his vast experience, he could turn unsophisticated battle patterns in Afghanistan into audacious modern guerrilla warfare.

Ilyas’ track record spoke for itself. In 1994, he launched the al-Hadid operation in the Indian capital, New Delhi, to get some of his jihadi comrades released. His group of 25 people included Sheikh Omar Saeed (the abductor of US reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi in 2002) as his deputy. The group abducted several foreigners, including American, Israeli and British tourists and took them to Ghaziabad near Delhi. They then demanded that the Indian authorities release their colleagues, but instead they attacked the hideout. Sheikh Omar was injured and arrested. (He was later released in a swap for the passengers of a hijacked Indian aircraft). Ilyas escaped unhurt. On February 25, 2000, the Indian army killed 14 civilians in Lonjot village in Pakistan-administered Kashmir after commandos had crossed the Line of Control (LoC) that separates the two Kashmirs. They returned to the Indian side with abducted Pakistani girls, and threw the severed heads of three of them at Pakistani soldiers.

The very next day, Ilyas conducted a guerilla operation against the Indian army in Nakyal sector after crossing the LoC with 25 fighters of 313 Brigade. They kidnapped an Indian army officer who was later beheaded – his head was paraded in the bazaars of Kotli back in Pakistani territory.

However, the most significant operation of Ilyas was in Aknor cantonment in Indian-administered Kashmir against the Indian armed forces following the massacre of Muslims in the Indian city of Gujarat in 2002. In cleverly planned attacks involving 313 Brigade divided into two groups, Indian generals, brigadiers and other senior officials were lured to the scene of the first attack. Two generals were injured (the Pakistan army could not injure a single Indian general in three wars) and several brigadiers and colonels were killed. This was one of the most telling setbacks for India in the long-running Kashmiri insurgency….

http://www.syedsaleemshahzad.com/