The killing of Saleem Shahzad: White House fingers ISI as prime suspect

Visit the Times website for source links in the following report:

Pakistan's Spies Tied to Slaying of a Journalist
by Jane Perlez and Eric Schmitt
July 4, 2011
The New York Times

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Obama administration officials believe that Pakistan’s powerful spy agency ordered the killing of a Pakistani journalist who had written scathing reports about the infiltration of militants in the country’s military, according to American officials.

New classified intelligence obtained before the May 29 disappearance of the journalist, Saleem Shahzad, 40, from the capital, Islamabad, and after the discovery of his mortally wounded body, showed that senior officials of the spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, directed the attack on him in an effort to silence criticism, two senior administration officials said.

The intelligence, which several administration officials said they believed was reliable and conclusive, showed that the actions of the ISI, as it is known, were “barbaric and unacceptable,” one of the officials said. They would not disclose further details about the intelligence.

But the disclosure of the information in itself could further aggravate the badly fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan, which worsened significantly with the American commando raid two months ago that killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistan safehouse and deeply embarrassed the Pakistani government, military and intelligence hierarchy. Obama administration officials will deliberate in the coming days how to present the information about Mr. Shahzad to the Pakistani government, an administration official said.

The disclosure of the intelligence was made in answer to questions about the possibility of its existence, and was reluctantly confirmed by the two officials. “There is a lot of high-level concern about the murder; no one is too busy not to look at this,” said one.

A third senior American official said there was enough other intelligence and indicators immediately after Mr. Shahzad’s death for the Americans to conclude that the ISI had ordered him killed.

“Every indication is that this was a deliberate, targeted killing that was most likely meant to send shock waves through Pakistan’s journalist community and civil society,” said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the information.

A spokesman for the Pakistan intelligence agency said in Islamabad on Monday night that “I am not commenting on this.” George Little, a spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, declined to comment.

In a statement the day after Mr. Shahzad’s waterlogged body was retrieved from a canal 60 miles from Islamabad, the ISI publicly denied accusations in the Pakistani news media that it had been responsible, calling them “totally unfounded.”

The ISI said the journalist’s death was “unfortunate and tragic,” and should not be “used to target and malign the country’s security agency.”

The killing of Mr. Shahzad, a contributor to the Web site Asia Times Online, aroused an immediate furor in the freewheeling news media in Pakistan.

Mr. Shahzad was the 37th journalist killed in Pakistan since the 9/11 attacks, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Pakistan’s civilian government, under pressure from the media, established a commission headed by a Supreme Court justice to investigate Mr. Shahzad’s death. The findings are scheduled to be released early next month.

Mr. Shahzad suffered 17 lacerated wounds delivered by a blunt instrument, a ruptured liver and two broken ribs, said Dr. Mohammed Farrukh Kamal, one of the three physicians who conducted the post-mortem.

The anger over Mr. Shahzad’s death followed unprecedented questioning in the media about the professionalism of the army and the ISI, a military-controlled spy agency, in the aftermath of the Bin Laden raid.

Since that initial volley of questioning, the ISI has mounted a steady counter-campaign. Senior ISI officials have called and visited journalists, warning them to douse their criticisms and rally around the theme of a united country, according to three journalists who declined to be named for fear of reprisals.

Mr. Shahzad, who wrote articles over the last several years that illuminated the relationship between the militants and the military, was abducted from the capital three days after publication of his article that said Al Qaeda was responsible for an audacious 16-hour commando attack on Pakistan’s main naval base in Karachi on May 22.

The attack was a reprisal for the navy’s arresting up to 10 naval personnel who had belonged to a Qaeda cell, Mr. Shahzad said.

The article, published by Asia Times Online, detailed how the attackers were guided by maps and logistical information provided from personnel inside the base.

Particularly embarrassing for the military, Mr. Shahzad described negotiations before the raid between the navy and a Qaeda representative, Abdul Samad Mansoor. The navy refused to release the detainees, Mr. Shahzad wrote. The Pakistani military maintains that it does not negotiate with militants.

Mr. Shahzad prided himself on staying out of the mainstream press, preferring, he wrote in a preface to his recently published book, “Inside Al Qaeda and the Taliban,” to challenge the “conventional wisdom.”

He had submitted articles to Asia Times Online, which claims 150,000 readers, since 2001, when he was a reporter in Karachi uncovering corruption in the public utility, the editor of the Web site, Tony Allison, said.

He broke into the limelight two years ago with an interview with Ilyas Kashmiri, a highly trained Pakistani militant allied to Al Qaeda. Mr. Kashmiri is believed to have been killed in a drone attack in early June.

According to associates, Mr. Shahzad cultivated contacts inside the military and the intelligence agency and members of militant groups, some from his student days in Jamaat Islami, a religious political party.

Some of his stories were threaded with embellishments. Soon after the Bin Laden raid, Mr. Shahzad wrote that Gen. David H. Petraeus visited the chief of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and informed him, an account the White House strongly disputes. Pakistani journalists questioned the authenticity of some of Mr. Shahzad’s reporting: whether those doubts arose from professional jealousy or were well founded was never clear.

But the ISI had been interested in Mr. Shahzad for some time. In an e-mail written to Ali Dayan Hasan, the head of Human Rights Watch in Pakistan, which Mr. Shahzad instructed Mr. Hasan to release if something happened to him, Mr. Shahzad gave details of an Oct. 17 meeting at ISI headquarters, where two senior officials in the press section wanted to discuss an article he had written about the release of an interrogated Afghan Taliban commander, Abdul Ghani Baradar.

At the end, Mr. Shahzad said, he had been given what Mr. Hasan said he understood to be a veiled death threat from the head of the press section, Rear Adm. Adnan Nazir. “We have recently arrested a terrorist and recovered a lot of data, diaries and other material during the interrogation,” Mr. Shahzad quoted Admiral Nazir saying. “The terrorist had a list with him. If I find your name in the list, I will certainly let you know.”

In its statement after the death of Mr. Shahzad, the ISI said the agency notifies “institutions and individuals alike of any threat warning received about them.” There were no “veiled or unveiled threats” in the e-mail, the ISI said.

Hameed Haroon, the publisher of Dawn, an English-language newspaper and the head of the newspaper publishers’ association in Pakistan, said that the journalist had confided to him that “he had received death threats from various officers of the ISI on at least three occasions in the past five years.”

It was possible that Mr. Shahzad had become too cavalier, said Ayesha Siddiqa, a Pakistani columnist and author.

“The rules of the game are not completely well defined,” she said. “Sometimes friendly elements cross an imaginary threshold and it is felt they must be taught a lesson.”

The efforts by the ISI to constrain the Pakistani news media have, to a degree, worked in recent days. The virulent criticism after Mr. Shahzad’s death has tempered a bit.

A Pakistani reporter, Waqar Kiani, who works for the British newspaper The Guardian, was beaten in the capital after Mr. Shahzad’s death with wooden batons and a rubber whip, by men who said: “You want to be a hero. We’ll make you a hero,” the newspaper reported. Mr. Kiani had just published an account of his abduction two years earlier at the hands of intelligence agents.

Jane Perlez reported from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington.

Police find body of Syed Saleem Shahzad; say he was tortured, killed

See this May 31 TIME report, published while there was still hope Shahzad was alive, for extensive background; report was updated at 10:00 AM EDT to reflect reports of his death.

June 1, Asia Times Online:

[HONG KONG] Syed Saleem Shahzad, the Pakistan Bureau Chief for Asia Times Online who went missing on Sunday evening, has been killed, according to police. ...

Police reported that his body was found in a canal in Mandi Bahauddin in Punjab province about 150 kilometers southeast of Islamabad and about 10 kilometers from where his car was found. They said that his body bore marks of torture.

He leaves a wife, two sons aged 14 and seven, and a daughter aged 12. ...

Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani expressed his "deep grief and sorrow" over Shahzad's death and ordered an immediate inquiry into his kidnapping and murder, according to Associated Press of Pakistan. ...

Shahzad, who has been writing for Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online for nearly 10 years, failed to show up for a scheduled appearance on a television talk show in the capital Islamabad.

Earlier, the International Federation of Journalists released a statement saying it "urgently appeals to the Government of Pakistan to order its security and police agencies to respond immediately to find a senior journalist who disappeared in Islamabad on May 29".

Shahzad, 40, had on several occasions been warned by officials of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) over articles they deemed to be detrimental to Pakistan's national interests or image.

Human Rights Watch researcher Ali Dayan Hasan earlier said he suspected ISI officials abducted Shahzad, possibly because of a recent story he wrote on al-Qaeda infiltration in the Pakistani navy. Authorities haven't commented. (Al-Qaeda had warned of Pakistan strike.)

Tony Allison, the Editor of Asia Times Online, expressed his deep concern for one of the most fearless journalists with whom he had ever worked. "We will bring the utmost pressure to bear on the authorities over this case. We at Asia Times Online express our deepest sympathies for Saleem's family."

Human Rights Watch claims Syed Saleem Shahzad in ISI custody (UPDATED 1:30 PM EDT)

UPDATE
10:00 AM update to TIME report I cited below:

Pakistan's main news channels are reporting that Shahzad's dead body has been found. One news channel broadcast what appeared to be a black and white image of Shahzad's face. There were visible signs of torture.

Asia Times Online is also reporting that Shahzad's body has been found by police and that it bears marks of torture.
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Missing Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad
with Giuseppe Marra, chief of AdnKronos International news agency

The Asia Times Online still hasn't commented on their bureau chief's disappearance; a note on the website says that due to the holiday they won't be uploading reports until May 31; perhaps the uploaders are still getting their beauty sleep because the uploads aren't there yet.

Ifnan Khan at Pakistan's Daily Times got the scoop by several hours on the news that Human Rights Watch (HRW) has, through "credible sources," learned Shahzad is in the custody of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). But I'm going to run with the report from TIME, which has much more detail and background than the Daily Times report. See TIME's website for source links in the report:

A Pakistani Journalist Vanishes: Is the I.S.I. Involved?
By Omar Waraich
Islamabad; Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Fears are growing for the safety of a well-known Pakistani journalist who has been missing for 39 hours now and, according to an international advocacy group, is believed to be in the custody of the Pakistan's controversial Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Human Rights Watch declared that Saleem Shahzad, a reporter working for the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online and Adnkronos International, the Italian news agency, could be subject to mistreatment and even torture while in custody.

While the ISI was said to have bristled at previous reports by Shahzad, his disappearance happened two days after he wrote a story for Asia Times Online that said that al-Qaeda had attacked a naval base in the port city of Karachi on May 22 after talks had broken down between the Pakistan navy and the global terror organization. In his report, Shahzad claimed that al-Qaeda had carried out the attack in retaliation for the arrest of naval officials suspected of links with the terror group.

The 17-hour attack on the Karachi naval base by at least four attackers led to the destruction of two Lockheed Martin P-3C Orion aircraft that had been enhanced with counterterrorism capabilities. An investigation is currently underway. At the time of the attack, former military officers and analysts speculated that it could not have been mounted without some help from the inside.

On Monday, Pakistani intelligence officials told journalists that they had picked up Kamran Ahmed Malik, a former navy commando, in Lahore on Friday. Malik and his brother have been detained in connection with the investigation. While Malik has not been formally charged, it is widely reported that he is being held for questioning about his links to both the terrorists and former colleagues inside the Navy.

Shahzad, the missing journalist, is believed to have been abducted by intelligence agents from the well-heeled F-6/2 area of Islamabad at around 5:45 p.m. At the time, he was on his way to the studios of Pakistan's Dunya News channel to discuss the contents of his latest report about the naval base attack. He had driven there from his house in central Islamabad's leafy F-8/4 neighborhood, some four kilometers away. At quarter to six, Shahzad had responded to a call from a producer at Dunya News and said that he was on his way, says Nasim Zehra, director of current affairs at the channel. No one has heard from him since.

The following morning, Ali Dayan Hasan, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, received a call from Shahzad's wife.

"He had told her that I was one of the people that should be called in case anything happens to him," says Hasan.

"He had feared for sometime that something like this would happen to him."

Later, Human Rights Watch was able to establish that Shahzad was being held by the ISI.

"We were informed through reliable interlocutors that he was detained by the ISI," says Hasan.

Those interlocutors, he adds, had received direct confirmation from the agency that it was detaining Shahzad. In any case, Hasan says, "in a high security zone like Islamabad, it is only the ISI that can effect the disappearance of man and his car without a trace."

Human Rights Watch was also told that Shahzad was supposed to return home on Monday night.

"The relevant people were informed that his telephone would be switched on first, enabling him to communicate with his family," says Hasan.

"They were told that he would return home soon after."

But by 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning, Shahzad had still not been heard from. At that point, Hasan recalled that Shahzad had sent him an email on Oct. 18, 2010 that was to be released in the event of his disappearance. At the time, says Hasan, he was "fairly sure that sooner or later something was going to happen."

Human Rights Watch says that it has made repeated attempts to contact the Pakistan government and establish Shahzad's whereabouts, but has received no response.

On Oct. 17, Shahzad had been summoned to the ISI's headquarters to discuss the contents of an article published the day before with two officials from the agency's media wing. That report, published in Asia Times Online, alleged that Pakistan had quietly released Afghan Taliban commander Mullah Baradar, Mullah Omar's deputy, to take part in talks through the Pakistan Army.

According to the email, labeled "For future reference" and seen by TIME, one of the officials said the following words to Shahzad: "I must give you a favor. We have recently arrested a terrorist and recovered a lot of data, diaries and other material during the interrogation. The terrorist had a list with him. If I find your name in the list, I will certainly let you know."

Incidentally, the two ISI officials present at the meeting, Rear Admiral Adnan Nawaz and Commodore Khalid Pervaiz, are both from the Navy. Pervaiz has just been appointed the new commander of the Karachi naval base that was attacked.

Hasan of Human Rights Watch says that statement can be read as a threat. "The tone and the manner in which it was issued did constitute a threat," he says. "Shahzad described it to me."

The rest of the meeting, as Shahzad described it in the email, was held in "an extremely polite and friendly atmosphere," but no words were minced. In the email, the ISI official was said to have asked for the source of his story. Shahzad writes that he would not name the source, but said that he had been told the information by an intelligence official and later confirmed the story from "the most credible Taliban source." According to Shahzad's account, he was asked to "write a denial of the story" but "refused to comply with the [ISI] demand."

Many of Shahzad's media colleagues speculate that the ISI is holding him to extract the identities of his sources. "It is very difficult to say what they want from him," says Hasan.

"But when the ISI picks up journalists in this manner, they are often subjected to mistreatment and torture. The longer he stays in their custody, the greater the likelihood is that he will be tortured."

Last September, Umar Cheema, an investigative reporter for The News, an influential Pakistani daily, was kidnapped, blindfolded, stripped naked, had his head and eyebrows shaved, beaten, filmed in humiliating positions, and dumped on the side of the road six hours later.

"If you can't avoid rape," one of his interrogators jeered during the ordeal, "enjoy it."

The perpetrators were never found, but when asked about his suspicions, Cheema told the New York Times: "I have suspicions and every journalist has suspicions that all fingers point to the ISI."

The disappearance of Shahzad is a reminder of the multiple hazards faced by journalists working in Pakistan. In January, Wali Khan Babar, a respected reporter for Geo News, was gunned down in Karachi. [1]

Last month, reporter Abdullah Bhittani cheated death after being shot three times in Rawalpindi, while a radio station in the northwest town of Charsadda was bombed. Bhittani has recovered, but with 10 slain journalists last year, the Washington DC-based Newseum called Pakistan "the deadliest country in the world for journalists." Reporters Without Borders ranked it 151st out of 178 countries when it comes to press freedom.

The principal threats, human rights campaigners say, come from military intelligence agencies and Islamist militants.

"As a consequence, it is becoming difficult for journalists to perform their basic professional duties in the context of a war between the Pakistani state and the militants," Hasan says.

"Both parties target journalists, arbitrarily and with brutality."

Human Rights Watch has called on the Pakistan government to locate Shahzad, return him safely to his home, and hold those who held him "illegally" accountable. "To date, no intelligence personnel have been held accountable for frequently perpetrated abuses against journalists," laments Hasan. "Tolerance for these practices has to end, now."

The International Federation of Journalists has also issued an appeal to Pakistan's government on Shahzad's behalf (press release via New Zealand Scoop news site:

Tuesday, 31 May 2011, 3:11 pm
Press Release: International Federation of Journalists
Appeal to Pakistan Government to Find Missing Journalist

May 31, 2011 - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) urgently appeals to the Government of Pakistan to order its security and police agencies to respond immediately to find a senior journalist who disappeared in Islamabad on May 29.

Syed Saleem Shahzad, the Pakistan bureau chief for Asia Times Online , went missing in the early evening [around 5 PM Pakistan time] while heading to the office of Dunya TV [a private TV station] to record a program.

The IFJ and its affiliate, the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), hold grave fears for the welfare of Shahzad, who published the first of a two-part investigative series into alleged links between Al-Qaeda and Pakistani naval officials on Asia Times Online on May 26.

“The IFJ is deeply worried for the safety of Syed Saleem Shahzad,” IFJ Asia -Pacific Director Jacqueline Park said.

“We appeal as a matter of urgency for Pakistan ’s Government to do all it can to find Shahzad quickly, and to prove a commitment to reverse Pakistan ’s poor track record in investigating abuses against journalists.”

See Shahzad's website for more information about him.

Regarding the controversy generated by his most recent investigative report for Asia Times Online, which is supposed to be a two-parter (the second part hasn't been published yet), his May 27 report opened with this paragraph

Al-Qaeda carried out the brazen attack on PNS Mehran naval air station in Karachi on May 22 after talks failed between the navy and al-Qaeda over the release of naval officials arrested on suspicion of al-Qaeda links ...

Pakistan's regime had chalked up the attack to the so-called Taliban, and a so-called Taliban group had claimed responsibility for it.

As to how much stock I'm putting in Shahzad's report, I've discussed this kind of question before. He belongs to that category of reporter who specializes in cultivating high-level sources in civilian government/military, many of which are anonymous. (In this case, sources in Pakistan's regime.)

Such sources are a double-edged sword: very useful for gaining inside information but they can also use the reporter as a conduit; i.e., to get into the public domain a point of view among a particular faction in government/military for reasons that are not always clear to the public -- or the reporter. So such reportage is a high-wire act, both for the reporter and the news consumer.

Right now I'm reading Shahzad's report as pieces of a large jigsaw puzzle called 'the present thinking inside Pakistan's military.' But my overriding concern at this time is his safety. Shahzad also cultivated sources among terrorist groups. HRW could have been misled by the informant, or the informant could have been misled. Pea-soup fog.

1) Sultan Hijazi, a TIME reader, asserted in the report's comment section "Wali Khan Babar was killed by his colleague at Geo News; the author should get his facts right." I have not followed the issue and so have no idea whether Hijazi is correct.

OMG Asia Times Pakistan Bureau Chief Saleem Shahzad has gone missing after report he filed alleging ties between al Qaeda and Pakistani navy officials

UPDATE May 31, 1:30 PM EDT
From a 10:00 AM update to May 31 TIME report on Shahzad's disappearance:

Pakistan's main news channels are reporting that Shahzad's dead body has been found. One news channel broadcast what appeared to be a black and white image of Shahzad's face. There were visible signs of torture.

Asia Times Online is also reporting today (June 1 HK time) that police claim to have found Shahzad's body and that it bears marks of torture.
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UPDATE
Human Rights Watch source reports that Shahzad is being detained by the ISI. See my May 31 post for the latest details on the story.
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May 30, 2011 from Pakistan's Dawn:

ISLAMABAD: Syed Saleem Shahzad, the Pakistan bureau chief of Asia Times Online, went missing Sunday evening, DawnNews reported.

Days before his disappearance, Shahzad had authored an article that alleged links between navy officials and al Qaeda.

Ali Imran, a Coordinator at the South Asia Free Media Association (Safma) in an email stated that Mr Shahbaz had left his house in Islamabad to participate in a television program but that he did not reach the TV station.

He did not contact his family and friends either, Mr Imran said, adding that Mr Shahzad’s mobile phone and car had not been traced yet.

A little more from a journalist for India's The Hindu who is stationed in Islamabad:

A journalist, Syed Saleem Shahzad, has been reported missing from the federal capital since Sunday, leading to speculation of him having been picked up by intelligence agencies for his article suggesting that last week's terrorist attack on the naval airbase, PNS Mehran, was retaliation to the Navy's crackdown on al-Qaeda operatives and sympathisers within the service.

The first of Mr. Shahzad's two-part article appeared on May 27 in the Asia Times Online, of which he is the Pakistan bureau chief. He has been missing since 5 p.m. on Sunday, when he left his home in Islamabad to participate in a programme of the Dunya news channel.

A parallel narrative on Mr. Shahzad's disappearance was he had been picked up by the intelligence agencies on suspicion of writing for the al-Qaeda and would be released by Monday night. Meanwhile, Twitter was abuzz with “Free Saleem Shahzad” messages though there was accompanying scepticism on whether he had been detained by the intelligence agencies.

In the PNS Mehran case, a former naval commando who had been court martialled has been taken into custody along with two others from Lahore as part of ongoing efforts to get to the bottom of the 17-hour-long siege that is widely believed to have been conducted with inside information.

Here is the May 27 report:

AN ASIA TIMES ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
Al-Qaeda had warned of Pakistan strike

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

This is the first article in a two-part report.

ISLAMABAD - Al-Qaeda carried out the brazen attack on PNS Mehran naval air station in Karachi on May 22 after talks failed between the navy and al-Qaeda over the release of naval officials arrested on suspicion of al-Qaeda links, an Asia Times Online investigation reveals.

Pakistani security forces battled for 15 hours to clear the naval base after it had been stormed by a handful of well-armed militants.

At least 10 people were killed and two United States-made P3-C

Orion surveillance and anti-submarine aircraft worth US$36 million each were destroyed before some of the attackers escaped through a cordon of thousands of armed forces.

An official statement placed the number of militants at six, with four killed and two escaping. Unofficial sources, though, claim there were 10 militants with six getting free. Asia Times Online contacts confirm that the attackers were from Ilyas Kashmiri's 313 Brigade, the operational arm of al-Qaeda.

Three attacks on navy buses in which at least nine people were killed last month were warning shots for navy officials to accept al-Qaeda's demands over the detained suspects.

The May 2 killing in Pakistan of Osama bin Laden spurred al-Qaeda groups into developing a consensus for the attack in Karachi, in part as revenge for the death of their leader and also to deal a blow to Pakistan's surveillance capacity against the Indian navy.

The deeper underlying motive, though, was a reaction to massive internal crackdowns on al-Qaeda affiliates within the navy.

Volcano of militancy

Several weeks ago, naval intelligence traced an al-Qaeda cell operating inside several navy bases in Karachi, the country's largest city and key port.

"Islamic sentiments are common in the armed forces," a senior navy official told Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity as he is not authorized to speak to the media.

"We never felt threatened by that. All armed forces around the world, whether American, British or Indian, take some inspiration from religion to motivate their cadre against the enemy. Pakistan came into existence on the two-nation theory that Hindus and Muslims are two separate nations and therefore no one can separate Islam and Islamic sentiment from the armed forces of Pakistan," the official said.

"Nonetheless, we observed an uneasy grouping on different naval bases in Karachi. While nobody can obstruct armed forces personnel for rendering religious rituals or studying Islam, the grouping [we observed] was against the discipline of the armed forces. That was the beginning of an intelligence operation in the navy to check for unscrupulous activities."

The official explained the grouping was against the leadership of the armed forces and opposed to its nexus with the United States against Islamic militancy. When some messages were intercepted hinting at attacks on visiting American officials, intelligence had good reason to take action and after careful evaluation at least 10 people - mostly from the lower cadre - were arrested in a series of operations.

"That was the beginning of huge trouble," the official said.

Those arrested were held in a naval intelligence office behind the chief minister's residence in Karachi, but before proper interrogation could begin, the in-charge of the investigation received direct threats from militants who made it clear they knew where the men were being detained.

The detainees were promptly moved to a safer location, but the threats continued. Officials involved in the case believe the militants feared interrogation would lead to the arrest of more of their loyalists in the navy. The militants therefore made it clear that if those detained were not released, naval installations would be attacked.

It was clear the militants were receiving good inside information as they always knew where the suspects were being detained, indicating sizeable al-Qaeda infiltration within the navy's ranks. A senior-level naval conference was called at which an intelligence official insisted that the matter be handled with great care, otherwise the consequences could be disastrous. Everybody present agreed, and it was decided to open a line of communication with al-Qaeda.

Abdul Samad Mansoori, a former student union activist and now part of 313 brigade, who originally hailed from Karachi but now lives in the North Waziristan tribal area was approached and talks begun. Al-Qaeda demanded the immediate release of the officials without further interrogation. This was rejected.

The detainees were allowed to speak to their families and were well treated, but officials were desperate to interrogate them fully to get an idea of the strength of al-Qaeda's penetration. The militants were told that once interrogation was completed, the men would be discharged from the service and freed.

Al-Qaeda rejected these terms and expressed its displeasure with the attacks on the navy buses in April.

These incidents pointed to more than the one al-Qaeda cell intelligence had tracked in the navy. The fear now was that if the problem was not addressed, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) supply lines could face a new threat. NATO convoys are routinely attacked once they begin the journey from Karachi to Afghanistan; now they could be at risk in Karachi port. Americans who often visit naval facilities in the city would also be in danger.

Therefore, another crackdown was conducted and more people were arrested. Those seized had different ethnic backgrounds. One naval commando came from South Waziristan's Mehsud tribe and was believed to have received direct instructions from Hakeemullah Mehsud, the chief of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (Pakistan Taliban). Others were from Punjab province and Karachi, the capital of Sindh province.

After Bin Laden was killed by American Navy Seals in Abbottabad, 60 kilometers north of Islamabad, militants decided the time was ripe for major action.

Within a week, insiders at PNS Mehran provided maps, pictures of different exit and entry routes taken in daylight and at night, the location of hangers and details of likely reaction from external security forces.

As a result, the militants were able to enter the heavily guarded facility where one group targeted the aircraft, a second group took on the first strike force and a third finally escaped with the others providing covering fire. Those who stayed behind were killed.

Next: Recruitment and training of militants

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief and author of Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11 published by Pluto Press, UK. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com

Al Qaeda undermines Mullah Omar's authority over hostage deal

More news about crazy people
Pakistan's military is trying to negotiate with 'good' Taliban to avoid a war in N. Waziristan. Meanwhile al Qaeda, ticked off by recent developments, pressures Asian Tigers terror group into flip-flopping on their agreement to release two hostages, which meant dissing Mullah Omar. Tsk tsk. Manners!

See a blurb from the (U.K.) Guardian, posted after the following report, for background on the Asian Tigers, which no one had heard of before last month. Here, the Pakistan bureau chief for the Asia Times Online lays out the AQ-Tigers-Omar kerfuffle, which suggests too many chefs elbowing each other in the kitchen:

Militants in no mood to talk
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
Asia Times Online
May 11, 2010

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan stands at a crossroad in its battle against militancy.

On the one hand, its Washington ally wants to turn their strategic partnership into a closer military alliance in which the United States would help the Pakistani military significantly ramp up the war against militancy - meaning opening a new battlefield, as the Americans did in Laos during the Vietnam war.

Alternatively, Pakistan is tempted to set aside American interests and apply its own mechanism to defeat militancy - which means striking deals with the "good" Taliban and defeating the "bad" Taliban without care for the consequences on the war in

Afghanistan or the future of al-Qaeda and its allied Punjabi groups operating in the Pakistani tribal areas.

Pakistan took a step towards the second option at the weekend when it air-dropped leaflets in the North Waziristan tribal area warning pro-Taliban tribes "to back out of their support of the militants [al-Qaeda and its associate Punjabi militants] or face the consequences, like the people of Swat and Bajaur -tribal agencies] faced and lost their properties and assets".

For hawkish decision-makers in Washington and "bad" militants in North Waziristan, there is another option: remove Pakistani links in the war and deal directly with one another on Pakistani soil.

Last week, the Barack Obama administration authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to step up drone attacks on militants in the tribal areas to include missile strikes against unknown targets. Previously, a suspect had to be identified. [Pundita note: Seems Bush authorized the 'no name' strikes in the closing months of his admininistration and they're being used for first time now.] The CIA wasted no time. In a series of attacks over the weekend, at least 10 militants were reported killed in North Waziristan.

The hardcore militants also flexed their muscles by blocking efforts led by the Afghan Taliban, who are not hostile towards Pakistan, for a truce and for the release of a former Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) hostage.

Colonel Ameer Sultan Tarrar, nicknamed "Colonel Imam" by the mujahideen as he was instrumental in helping to raise the Taliban militia, was abducted by a Punjabi group, the Asian Tigers, on March 25, along with journalist Asad Qureshi. The bullet-riddled body of Khalid Khawaja, another former ISI official who was abducted at the same time, was recently found in North Waziristan.

The Tigers ignored instructions from Taliban leader Mullah Omar that the men should be freed, instead issuing a list of high-profile men in Pakistani jails to be released in 15 days. Otherwise, they said, Tarrar would meet the same fate as Khawaja. For the release of Qureshi, there is a separate demand of US$10 million in ransom. See Qureshi's video ... sent to ATol at the weekend.

The New York Times reported on Friday that evidence of ties between the man accused of trying to car bomb Times Square in New York - Faisal Shahzad - and Pakistani militants had intensified debate inside the Barack Obama administration about expanding America's military presence in Pakistan. Some officials are said to want to increase the number of special operations forces working with Pakistani troops in the western mountains.

In a dispatch from Washington, the newspaper said the American military presence in Pakistan had already grown substantially over the past year, and now totaled more than 200 troops, part of a largely secret program to share intelligence with the Pakistani army and paramilitary troops and train them to battle militant groups.

This would play into the hands of the militants, who aim to lure the Americans into what they see as a trap in the rugged mountainous terrain on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.

Militants make demands

Among the 150 prisoners the militants want released are those involved in an attack on military headquarters in Rawalpindi, the killing of a retired general, abductions for ransom, and those allegedly connected to the attack on Mumbai in India in November 2008. Interior Minister Rahman Malik, who is traveling in Britain, was unable to respond to questions from Asia Times Online.

The militants had initially said they would release both captives.

A militant spokesman, Usman Punjabi, told ATol on April 29 on the telephone that Khawaja would be executed (which happened the next day) but that Colonel Imam would be released as he was not a part of Khawaja's plan to negotiate peace between the militants and the military,

Other sources told ATol that Colonel Imam was to be released because of pressure from the Afghan Taliban and that he would be handed into the custody of Afghan Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani's group led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur, the chief of the Taliban in North Waziristan. This was also widely reported in the Pakistani media.

However, everything changed with the arrest of Faisal Shahzad in New York and the ramping up of the drone program. Al-Qaeda forcibly put its foot down and managed to undermine the authority of Mullah Omar.

"It was completely wrong news that we agree to the release of Colonel Imam and Asad Qureshi," Usman Punjabi told ATol on the telephone on Sunday. "We did not receive any direct instruction from Mullah Omar. We did not see any direct emissary of Mullah Omar's. What we heard regarding the instructions [from Mullah Omar] was just talk by some ISI-backed Taliban groups in North Waziristan that they had been asked by Mullah Omar to release Colonel Imam.

"So we have asked them to provide evidence - any audio or video recording of Mullah Omar in which he ordered the release of Colonel Imam. We cannot believe the words of just any person in that regard," said Usman Punjabi.

"For us Colonel Imam was not a mujahid. If he was assumed in the past as the father of the Taliban, he did that as a government employee - being an army officer. He still receives a pension from the Pakistan army. To us he is their man," said Usman Punjabi. This is in direct contradiction to what he earlier told ATol, that Colonel Imam would be released.

It is becoming apparent that al-Qaeda is calling the shots in North Waziristan and creating a situation under which the good and bad Taliban will not have any choice but to operate under al-Qaeda's flagship while trying to entice the US into a fight.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com

From the May 6 issue of the Guardian:

[...] Unheard of until last month, Asian Tigers is a new Taliban splinter group based in North Waziristan with a taste for brutal kidnappings. It is thought to be led by Punjabi sectarian extremists, probably with the Lashkar i Jhangvi group, who have taken shelter in the tribal belt.

The group shot to prominence with the kidnapping of two retired ISI officers and a journalist, Asad Qureshi. Last week the group executed one of the ISI men, Khalid Khawaja, and threatened to kill the others unless its demands for money and prisoners were met.

The size and influence of the group are unclear but there is some speculation that Asian Tigers have links with [Hakeemullah] Mehsud's TTP. Its emergence underscores how Pakistan's jihadi firmament is fragmenting and reshaping – a phenomenon that boosts the chances of infighting but also makes it more difficult to stamp out militancy. [..]