Al Qaeda's new central front in Pakistan

NY Times:

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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 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.

“Al Qaeda right now seems to have turned its face toward Pakistan and attacks on the Pakistani government and Pakistani people,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters in Washington on Dec. 21.

The expansion of Pakistan’s own militants and their fortified links with Al Qaeda presents deeply troubling developments 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 which Ms. Bhutto had begun to acknowledge in her many public statements that the greatest threat to her country lay 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 Pakistan’s 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 country’s 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 administration’s support of him.

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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. “Al Qaeda is now as much a Pakistani phenomenon as it is an Arab or foreign element,” 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. Bhutto’s life in Rawalpindi.

A senior American intelligence official said it was clear from his reading of recent threat reports that “the political process was not going to go untouched,” adding that militants almost surely would go to any length “to create political disarray.”

And while Ms. Bhutto had perhaps the longest list of enemies among Pakistan’s most prominent politicians, the official said, “It almost didn’t 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.”

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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, these tribes and foreign networks have overlapping operations and agendas.

“The country is facing the gravest challenge from these terrorists and extremist elements,” 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. Bhutto’s assassination. “They are systematically targeting our state institutions in order to destabilize the country.”

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The article goes on to describe the al Qaeda/Taliban leadership in Pakistan. Perhaps the NY Times will insist on a new name for al Qaeda in Pakistan now. While the article presents the story in ominous tones, and it could be ominous if the Pakistan army does not respond, there is something else going on.

Al Qaeda is in retreat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its European and American operations have been thwarted over the last two years and its operatives have been captured. It is really fighting a rear guard action to protect its last remaining base. It is doing so in typical al Qaeda fashion by attempting to create chaos from which one its supporting groups can emerge. Pakistan can defeat this strategy if it has the will. The US defeated the same strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Ethiopians defeated it in Somalia.

Al Qaeda is inherently weak when under direct attack. It is most chaotic when its forces act like cock roaches making a mess here and there and then scurrying for a hiding place. there problem now is that the ambiguity of hiding places is getting slimmer and there is a certain desperation about their current situation. They were willing to leave Pakistan alone when they were using it as a base of foreign attacks. Now their attacks are in hopes of creating some chaos from which they can survive.