Gunships target fresh faces of al Qaeda terror

By JAN McGIRK

ISLAMABAD - Pakistani armed forces pounded a remote tribal border zone next to Afghanistan in a new offensive to purge al Qaeda-linked insurgents sheltering with Pashtun tribesmen.

In five days of fighting near Shakai village in southern Waziristan, a suspected al Qaeda training base was destroyed and mountain hideouts attacked.

Some 35 militants and 15 Pakistani soldiers have died in skirmishes since Wednesday, after rocket attacks on army checkpoints west of Wana, a military spokesman said.

Casualties are mounting and US forces are poised just beyond the border to capture any fleeing combatants.

Air force jets joined helicopter gunships for the first time on Friday, raising the stakes in Pakistan's drive against al Qaeda.

Alleged terror financier, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, is a primary target and Nek Mohammed, a charismatic young Pakistani chieftain, is another marked man in Waziristan.

Alongside Osama Bin Laden, Muhammad Mullah Omar, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri and the bellicose Uzbek leader Tahir Yuldevish - all considered "high value targets" suspected to have taken refuge in Waziristan after the Taleban regime fell in December 2001 - Nek Mohammed is feared as a terrorist on the rise.

Threats by this former Taleban commander to bring the battle from the tribal territories into urban Pakistan, which were made during a satellite phone interview last week with the BBC Pashto service, appear far from idle.

In fact, they may have inspired last Friday's assassination attempt on a top general's convoy in Karachi, which left 11 dead in Pakistan's commercial centre. The slick Jihadi recruitment DVDs which feature this 27-year-old militant are hot items in the bazaars across Pakistan's Northwest Frontier province.

Some local youths hail Nek Mohammed as a home-grown revolutionary. In the past three weeks, he has twice crossed into Afghanistan even though he is high on the Americans' wanted list.

Nek Mohammed is notorious as al Qaeda's roguishly handsome point man in Waziristan, where he allegedly supplies foreign fighters with hideouts and rations, recruits new guerrillas loyal to fugitive Taleban chief Mullah Muhammad Omar, and grows rich pocketing wads of foreign cash and reselling fleets of al Qaeda cars.

To mark his new stature as the Pashtun hero who humbled the Pakistan Army and defied the Americans, Nek Mohammed recently took a second bride.

By tradition, he is entitled to two more wives and they are said to be queuing up for this turbaned firebrand with long black ringlets and a sly grin. Ardent fans - of both sexes - listen out for the radio spots he does by satellite phone or endlessly replay his two militant DVDs.

These feature footage of the Pakistani Army's failed spring offensive in tandem with US forces at Afghan firebases, which fizzled out at a clandestine getaway tunnel freshly dug under Nek Mohammad's compound.

Al Qaeda warriors, said to include Chechens and Uzbeks, apparently had melted away, to the fury of Washington and Islamabad.

The sprawling stone compound was initially raided in mid-March after Nek Mohammed surfaced on an early DVD vowing to protect foreign militants.

"They have fought a jihad against the Russians and before them the British," Nek Mohammed thundered on the video. "Now that the Americans are here we will wage jihad against them."

After fighting broke out at Nek Muhammed's compound last March, further battles erupted near the town of Wana as guerrillas ambushed government convoys and rocketed Peshawar.

An open tribal rebellion appeared imminent, and Islamabad changed tack. Nek Mohammed, summoned by the Army's corps commander last April for truce talks with other tribal leaders at Shakai village, vowed not to launch any attacks from Pakistani soil and to live in peace after registering their foreign guests.

Dramatically, he surrendered one rusty sword, a pistol and a Kalashnikov rifle as part of a ceasefire agreement negotiated after his al Qaeda-backed fighters killed at least 60 Pakistani soldiers. That truce broke down last week when Nek Mohammed refused to hand over any al Qaeda "remnants" still lodging in his territory.

The prolonged negotiations with General Pervez Musharraf's Government yielded no foreign militants, even though 4000 paramilitary tribal fighters supposedly searched Waziristan for any of the 500 men said to have taken sanctuary there.

Their patience exhausted, the army dropped bombs on the hideouts of these suspected militants early on Friday.

They also issued orders for the capture of Nek Mohammed and his four closest colleagues, dead or alive.

The battles erupted after days of attempts to avoid armed confrontation. A plan to raze Wana's main bazaar if tribesmen could not produce any foreign fighters said to be hiding in the area appears to have pushed even more armed locals into the resistance.

The army is attacking "known and confirmed hideouts of miscreants in the South Waziristan region," a military spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan, told reporters.

Sultan blamed Nek Mohammed and his cronies for taking "undue advantage" of the amnesty to draw "personal benefits" at the cost of fellow tribesmen.

- INDEPENDENT