Sat Sep 16, 2006 at 10:51:45 AM PDT
Pakistan on Friday freed 2,500 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters who have been imprisoned as part of its deal with tribal leaders and Taliban forces in Waziristan.
Those released are said to include -- according to sources cited by Bill Roggio, a right-leaning counterterrorism expert -- senior al Qaeda operatives as well as foot soldiers and two men -- Mohammad Hashim Qadeerand Mohammad Bashir -- who were implicated in the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl.
Also released were Mansour Hasnain, who hijacked an Indian Airlines jet in 1999 and was a member of the group that kidnapped Pearl; Mohammad Khaled, a Taliban brigade leader who fought U.S. forces in Afghanistan; Fazl-e-Raziq, a senior aide to Osama Bin Laden; and Ghulam Mustafa, an al Qaeda logistics expert.
quaoar's diary :: ::
The prisoners were handed over to the al-Khidmat Foundation, which is linked to the hardline Islamist party Jamaat-i-Islami. A foundation official was up front about where some of those freed might end up:
On the question of whether released militants would return to jihad, Hazrat Aman, a field officer of the al-Khidmat Foundation, said: "If they react like that it is a natural phenomenon. Some of these people spent two to three years in jail. Some of them will live peacefully and others will join jihad again."
The Bush Administration is reported to be outraged.
Pakistan's credibility as a leading ally in the war on terrorism was called into question last night when it emerged that President Pervez Musharraf's government had authorised the release from jail of thousands of Taliban fighters caught fighting coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Five years after American-led coalition forces overthrew the Taliban during Operation Enduring Freedom, United States officials have been horrified to discover that thousands of foreign fighters detained by Pakistan after fleeing the battleground in Afghanistan have been quietly released and allowed to return to their home countries.
Pakistani lawyers acting for the militants claim they have freed 2,500 foreigners who were originally held on suspicion of having links to al-Qa'eda or the Taliban over the past four years.
The mass release of the prisoners has provoked a stern rebuke to the Musharraf regime from the American government. "We have repeatedly warned Pakistan over arresting and then releasing suspects," said a US diplomat in Islamabad. "We are monitoring their response with great concern."
Of course, that's not what the Bush Administration is saying in public. In fact, the U.S. has endorsed Pakistan's peace treaty with the Taliban.
WASHINGTON, Sept 15: The United States believes that the agreement the government recently signed with pro-Taliban tribal chiefs in Waziristan has the `potential to work'.
In a policy speech at the School of Advanced International Studies here, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher endorsed the deal as an effort to get tribal support to defeat terrorism.
...
He declared that no country had done more than Pakistan in the war against terror.
Noting that the government had carved out a new strategy to deal with the cross-border activities of Taliban and Al Qaeda sympathisers, Mr Boucher said: "The agreement really has the potential to work."
There is also concern that other tribal areas along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan will try for similar deals with the Musharraf government and that the Taliban will be able to form a de facto state out of Waziristan, other Pakistani tribal areas and areas of southern Afghanistan, including Farah Province on the border with Iran.
KABUL, Afghanistan -- As NATO troops exert pressure on Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan, militants have regrouped in western provinces and ignited violence that has killed a dozen people in two days, officials said yesterday.
Afghan and NATO officials fear that Farah province, which borders Iran and is twice the size of Maryland, could become a Taliban sanctuary if military power isn't used to crush the militant threat quickly. Farah is a predominantly Pashtun area where people have ethnic links to the Taliban militia.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/16/135145/072
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