Intelligence

Religious Pressure, Cash Protect al-Qaida

Yahoo! News - Religious Pressure, Cash Protect al-Qaida

By NOOR KHAN, Associated Press Writer
SHKIN, Afghanistan - From a mosque high on an Afghan peak, tribal elder Mohammed Safai pointed to what he said was an al-Qaida training camp on the mountain of Salor Gai — just across the frontier in Pakistan.

One by one, fellow Afghan tribal leaders around him ticked off the names of surrounding Pakistani villages that they say are sheltering al-Qaida and Taliban: Bahna. Shakul. Mangadthai.

Elders of different tribes convene Jirga, or a grand meeting, to discuss ongoing anti-al-Qaida operations in Pakistan tribal agency, Sunday, March 21, 2004 in Wana of South Waziristan. Pakistani forces were searching homes amid a lull in fierce fighting against suspected al-Qaida holdouts near the Afghan border on Sunday, while tribal villagers cursed the army for deaths of civilians during its biggest counter-terrorist drive yet. (AP Photo/Ahsanullah Wazir)

Across the poorly marked and little-heeded border, Pakistani forces on Sunday were searching homes in South Waziristan province in a six-day-old hunt for suspected al-Qaida that has seen dozens of people killed and more than 100 people arrested.

The Afghan Pashtuns say their Pakistani Pashtun brothers know the terror camps and hiding places. But the tribal elders in Pakistan will likely never tell — silenced by a code of honor, by al-Qaida money, and by a fierce distrust of the far-off Pakistani government, Pashtun leaders said.

"The tribal area people, they are sympathizers with al-Qaida and Taliban," Safai said. "They are not showing the exact location where al-Qaida is hiding."

In South Wazirstan, Pakistani officials and residents said they had no idea whether there was an al-Qaida camp on Salor Gai, as the Afghans charge. But the Afghans, who cross the border at will, say the Pakistanis are playing dumb.

"The al-Qaida people, they are so rich — they are giving so much money to the people who are giving shelter to al-Qaida and Taliban," said Mirowgain Khan, like Safai, an Afghan elder of the Pashtun Kharoti tribe.

Pakistan's anti-American Jamaat-e-Islami religious party is helping seal the silence, circulating among Pakistani border villages to encourage the Pashtun there to be faithful hosts to their al-Qaida and Taliban guests, say the Afghans.

Pakistan military leaders said they believed a "high-value" suspect might be at the center of this week's fighting — perhaps Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s deputy, Ayman al-Zawarhri, or Tahir Yuldash, the leader of an Uzbek terror group allied with al-Qaida.

On Thursday, Safai said, six al-Qaida fighters seeking escape from the Pakistani operation fled over the border to villages around a U.S. military outpost at Shkin, 100 miles south of Kabul, the Afghan capital.

Safai sent tribal gunmen, chasing off five of the men and capturing a sixth, he said.

The man was al-Qaida, a Chechen who spoke a little Pashto and Dari, the two leading languages in Afghanistan (news - web sites), Safai said.

Tribal men took an AK-47 assault rifle and seven grenades off the fugitive, and turned the Chechen over to the U.S. military at Shkin.

Around Shkin, tribal elders were worried Sunday after they were warned in an anonymous letter that their villages would be rocketed if they failed to release the Chechen.

The elders repeat a common complaint of Afghans here in Paktika province — that neither side, Pakistani or Afghan, does anything to close the frontier.

In two days in the border mountains of Paktika, an Associated Press reporter saw no Afghan troops in the countryside, and only a few American soldiers.

Afghans here insist they welcome the U.S. forces, seeing them as the promise of reconstruction, aid and security. But they said the Americans have not sought help from locals who know the hundreds of cross-border trails.

"If they want to stop al-Qaida, they have to get support of the local people living and belonging to this area. They know all the ways," Safai said.

Pakistan, meanwhile, says it is confident that its paramilitary and soldiers can track down militants.

"Our people who are guarding the border know these tribesmen very well," Abdul Rauf Chaudhry, spokesman for Pakistan's Interior Ministry, said in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

Looking at Salor Gai mountain, Safai scoffed.

"If you wanted to, you could walk from there to Kabul, and not hit a single checkpoint," he said.

March 21, 2004 at 10:52 PM in Al Qaeda | Permalink | TrackBack (55) | Top of page | Blog Home