Pakistan Report + Comment: 1-14-06 =Humane Rights Agenda

Pakistan Report + Comment: 1-14-06 =Humane Rights Agenda

Source: Al-Zawahiri not among 18 killed in airstrike
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/01/14/alqaeda.strike/index.html

Saturday, January 14, 2006; Posted: 1:24 p.m. EST (18:24 GMT)

(CNN) -- Ayman al-Zawahiri -- Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in the al Qaeda terrorist network -- was not killed in a CIA airstrike on a remote Pakistani village, according to a Pakistani intelligence official. U.S. sources said al-Zawahiri was the target of Friday's strike and initially reported that he may have been among the 18 people killed. The Pakistani intelligence official said it was not known whether al-Zawahiri was in the area. Pakistan's Foreign Office said Saturday it had lodged a protest with the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan over the attack on the village of Damadola, near the Afghan border.

"Pakistan will also take up this matter in the next meeting of Tripartite Commission," a statement read. The group is made up of senior military and diplomatic representatives from coalition forces, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Associated Press quoted a senior Pakistani intelligence official as saying "our investigations conclude that they (the CIA) acted on a false information." Reuters also quoted a senior Pakistani official as saying: "Al-Zawahri was not there at the time of the attack."

The Pentagon and the White House declined to comment on initial reports of the airstrike on Friday. (Watch how al-Zawahiri was targeted -- 5:39)

Friday morning's strike killed eight men, five women and five children, Pakistani intelligence sources told CNN. Three homes were targeted. "We are conducting tests to identify the bodies," one intelligence official said.

The Foreign Office statement said a preliminary investigation shows "there was foreign presence in the area and that in all probability was targeted from across the border in Afghanistan. As a result of this act there has been loss of innocent civilian lives which we condemn. The investigations are still continuing."

Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, Pakistan's information minister, said that the U.S. ambassador, Ryan Crocker, is to be summoned and a strong protest will be made.

"While this act is highly condemnable, we have been for a long time been striving to rid all our tribal areas of foreign intruders who have been responsible for all the violence and misery in the region. This situation has to be brought to an end."He added that it "is also the responsibility of the people in the areas to fully co-operate.'"

U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan have long been concerned about foreign fighters taking refuge in neighboring Pakistan. The Foreign Office statement said Pakistan's armed forces "have undertaken a large-scale operation against the foreign militants and it remains our responsibility to protect our people and territory from outside intrusion."

Hundreds of residents took part Saturday in protesting the attack.

The strike came a week after the Arabic language news network Al-Jazeera aired a new videotape with a message from al-Zawahiri, in which he called on U.S. President George W. Bush to admit defeat in Iraq. U.S. authorities believe al-Zawahiri, 54, a doctor from a prominent Egyptian family, helped mastermind the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He has also been indicted in the United States for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The U.S. government has put up a $25 million reward for information leading to his capture.

While bin Laden himself hasn't been heard from since October 2004, last week's videotape was the fifth message from al-Zawahiri released over the past year, including several claiming responsibility for the July attacks on London's transit system.

Considered the intellectual and ideological driving force behind al Qaeda, al-Zawahiri has been associated with bin Laden since at least 1987, when they first met in Pakistan. He is also believed to act as bin Laden's personal physician. In 1998, al-Zawahiri merged his own Islamic militant group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, into bin Laden's organization. Three months after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. forces attacked al-Zawahiri's residence in Afghanistan, killing his wife and children.

In March 2004, Pakistani troops launched an assault on an area in Waziristan province where intelligence indicated al-Zawahiri was hiding, but he was not captured. Last month, Pakistani officials confirmed the death of a top al Qaeda official, Abu Hamza Rabia, who was killed in an explosion December 1 north of the border town of Miram Shah (Full story). But witnesses gave conflicting accounts of how he died. Villagers said he was killed in a missile strike, while Pakistan officials said he died while working with explosives.

Egyptian-born Rabia was described as al Qaeda's operations chief and No. 3 man.
-- CNN Producer Syed Mohsin Naqvi contributed to this report

Copyright 2006 CNN. All rights reserved.
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Pakistan summons US envoy over raid: Saturday 14 January 2006
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/3BB59B7D-28A6-4B96-B220-63B5C4005B9D.htm

Al-Zawahiri (R) is Osama bin Laden's deputy (file)

Pakistan has summoned the US ambassador to protest against an air strike targeting Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's deputy leader, that killed 18 villagers. Pakistani officials said on Saturday that al-Zawahiri was not at the site attacked and regretted the loss of civilian lives.

"The US ambassador will be called to the foreign office," Shaikh Rashid Ahmed, the information minister, said, adding that a protest would be lodged over the attack on Friday in which, according to residents, 18 civilians were killed and three homes destroyed. Another senior Pakistani government official said Osama bin Laden's deputy was not in Damadola village, near the Afghan border, at the time of the attack.

Ahmed said: "We want to assure the people we will not allow such an incident to reoccur," reading a statement which termed the attack as "highly condemnable".

Women and children: CNN quoted sources saying the CIA ordered Friday's strike after receiving intelligence information that al-Zawahiri was in a village near the border.

"The US ambassador will be called to the foreign office... We want to assure the people we will not allow such an incident to reoccur" ~ Shaikh Rashid Ahmed, Pakistan information minister

ABC News quoted Pakistani military sources as saying that five of those killed were "high-level" al-Qaida figures. But tribesmen in Damadola village in the Bajaur tribal area said only locals were killed - 18 of their kinfolk, including eight women and five children.

US sources in Washington knowledgeable about the strike, believed to have been conducted by CIA-operated unmanned drones armed with missiles, said it would not be known whether al-Zawahiri was killed until the remains of the dead were examined.

Not there: Two senior Pakistani officials said on Saturday that the CIA had acted on incorrect information and al-Zawahiri was not at the site of the attack.

"Their information was wrong, and our investigations conclude that they acted on a false information," said a senior intelligence official who has direct knowledge of Pakistan's investigations into the attacks. His account was confirmed by a senior government official, who said al-Zawahiri "was not there".

Dinner celebration: A Pakistani intelligence source said he had been told by US officials the strike was ordered based on information that al-Zawahiri and Mullah Mohammad Omar, the ousted Taliban leader, had been invited to a dinner to celebrate this week's Muslim Eid al-Adha festival.
The hit was said to be carried out by unmanned drones (file)

They had no confirmation, however, that either had been there at the time of the attack at about 3am on Friday (2200 GMT Thursday).

Mullah Dadullah, a senior Taliban commander, said no Taliban commander had been at the dinner. Another intelligence official said four US aircraft had fired four missiles that destroyed three houses in the attack. Major Chris Karns, a spokesman at US Central Command in Florida, the command responsible for the region, said there had been no official report of an attack in Pakistan.

Missing bodies: As well as the 18 villagers killed, five other bodies were thought to have been removed after the attack and Pakistani agents were uncertain where they had been taken, said the first intelligence source, who declined to be identified. One Damadola resident said three or four foreigners had come from Afghanistan for Eid. Another said he had seen bodies of at least two people who seemed to have been outsiders. "Where these bodies have gone, I don't know," he said.

Pakistan's The News newspaper said the villagers had been buried after a mass funeral led by Maulana Faqir Muhammad, a cleric wanted for giving shelter to suspected al-Qaida members.

Protesters tear-gassed: Ahmad Zaidan, Aljazeera's Pakistan bureau chief, said US forces had targeted Pakistani tribal areas in the past week, hitting a house in the tribal Mirah Shah area, killing eight Pakistani civilians and drawing a protest from Pakistan's Foreign Ministry. Zaidan also reported that thousands of people had demonstrated in the area against the US air strike on Saturday.

Tribesmen stand by their home damaged by US missiles on Friday

Pakistani police tear-gassed tribesmen who burned down a US-funded aid agency office on Saturday. An estimated 5000 people had gathered at a stadium near Khar, the main town in the Bajur tribal zone. Some demonstrators set fire to the offices of Associated Development Construction, a non-governmental organisation funded by the US Agency for International Development, an official at the aid group said.

"They have attacked our office in reaction to the deaths on Friday and put it on fire. It is badly damaged," Fazal Maibood, a site engineer, said.

The mob also stole hundreds of bags of cement, and up to 20 tonnes of steel construction material were damaged by the fire, he added. Police later fired tear gas shells to disperse the mob after the crowd headed towards a music and video cassette market, while security forces fired two shots in the air. Security men were also seen arresting young tribesmen and bundling them into the backs of vans.

Aljazeera's Zaidan said Pakistani Islamic organisations had called for protests on Sunday against the US presence and violations in the country.
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Al-Zawahiri: Bin Ladin still in charge: = Wednesday 07 December 2005
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/081F5547-A5A6-429B-A53D-080568E52A5A.htm

Al-Zawahiri encouraged attacks on Muslim oil sites Al-Qaida deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahiri has said in a video posted on a website that the network's leader Osama bin Ladin is alive and leading the jihad against the West. In a bid to play down US claims of achieving progress in the "war on terror", al-Zawahiri said al-Qaida was expanding, spreading and getting stronger, and called on supporters to attack oil sites in Muslim countries.

"All the lies that [US President George] Bush tries to delude the Americans with, saying that he destroyed half, or three quarters of al-Qaida are but nonsense merely in his own head," al-Zawahiri said in the video.

"We want to tell all the Muslims and the mujahidin al-Qaida, thank God, is expanding and increasing in strength," he said. "I call on mujahidin to focus their attacks on Muslims' embezzled oil. Most of its revenues go to the enemies of Islam; meanwhile most of what is left is taken by the thieves who are ruling our countries."

US bases: Al-Zawahiri accused the US of trying to control Iraq's wealth and maintain military bases away from the reach of mujahidin even after it eventually withdraws from the country. He claimed responsibility for London's July attacks saying that the British policy in Iraq and Palestine, and its hostility to Islam, justified what happened in London. He also called on "resistance factions" in Iraq to unite, and urged Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen to form one political entity to liberate Iraq.

It was al-Zawahiri's first appearance since a videotape on 19 September when he claimed responsibility for the deadly attacks on London's transport system in July.

Aljazeera on 4 August aired a video of al-Zawahiri warning Britain and the US of more attacks, exactly four weeks after the London bombing, which was followed by failed copycat attacks a fortnight later. The al-Qaida network has claimed attacks around the world, including the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US.

Main strategist: The US believes al-Zawahiri, who has a $25 million bounty on his head, is the main strategist and key ideologist in the chain of command of al-Qaida.

Al-Zawahiri has been implicated in the 1981 assassination of the then Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat, and the massacre of foreign tourists in the Nile resort of Luxor in 1997.

An eye surgeon by training and from a wealthy Egyptian family, he faces a death sentence in Egypt. Before becoming Bin Ladin's right-hand man, he was the leader of the Jihad group, which spearheaded together with the Jamaa Islamiyah organisation a wave of attacks that rocked Egypt in the 1990s.

Aljazeera + Agencies
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Profile: Ayman al-Zawahiri =Monday 21 February 2005
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/78446020-E13D-48EE-962F-98E0E08E543B.htm

Al-Zawahiri is thought to be the brain behind Usama bin Ladin: If truly encircled by his enemies as reports emanating from Pakistan suggest, top al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri may well be reviewing his tumultuous life. The Egyptian's lifetime devotion to religious war has cost him his family, his wealth and perhaps now will also claim his future.

Surrounded by Pakistani troops on the border with Afghanistan, three-and-a-half-years after the September 11 attacks made him one of the most wanted men in the world, al-Zawahiri's pursuers would admit that he has made immense personal sacrifices for the cause he believed in.

Wedded to cause: Decades ago he gave up the affluent life of a Cairo doctor to dedicate himself to the Islamist underground, a choice that would eventually take him, like bin Ladin, to the mountains of Afghanistan.

In December 2001 his wife and several children were reported to have been blown to pieces by American bombing in Afghanistan, but the bespectacled al-Qaida leader managed to escape the US dragnet and went on the run.

Born in 1951, al-Zawahiri espoused his cause from an early age. In the 1960s he joined Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab world's oldest Islamist group.

He was tried, along with many others, for links to the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. He served a three-year jail term for illegal arms possession but was acquitted of the main charges.

Expanding work: In 1985, al-Zawahiri left Egypt for Pakistan, where he worked as a doctor treating fighters wounded in battles against Soviet forces occupying neighbouring Afghanistan.
He took over in 1993 the leadership of Jihad, Egypt's second largest Islamic armed group. A military court in Egypt sentenced al-Zawahiri to death in absentia in 1999 for militant activities.
Al-Zawahiri joined forces with bin Ladin in 1998. He has been indicted in connection with the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

"Ayman is for bin Ladin like the brain to the body," a Cairo-based lawyer Montasser al-Zayat says.

In a 2003 audiotape, al-Zawahiri urged Muslims to strike at the embassies and commercial interests of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Norway and half a dozen Middle East states he called subjects of US and Israel.
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Qaeda No.2 away during attack: Pakistan official = 1/14/06 PM-PST
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&u=/nm/20060114/ts_nm/security_pakistan_zawahri_dc_5

ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. airstrike on Pakistan village targeted al Qaeda's second-in-command, U.S. intelligence sources say, but Pakistani officials said Ayman al-Zawahri was not there and condemned the attack. The strike near the Afghan border on Friday killed at least 18 people, including women and children, and three houses were destroyed, according to residents of Damadola village in Bajaur tribal area. CIA-operated unmanned drones were believed to have been used in the attack, U.S. sources said. A Pakistani intelligence official said four missiles had been fired. Pakistan condemned the airstrike and summoned U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said he had no information about Zawahri, though another high-ranking Pakistani official said Osama bin Laden's deputy was not in the village.

"Al-Zawahri was not there at the time," the official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.

Al Arabiya satellite television said on Saturday Zawahri was alive, quoting a source which it said has contact with al Qaeda.

The United States has offered $25 million each for Egyptian Zawahri and bin Laden, who have been on the run since U.S.-led forces toppled Afghanistan's Taliban government in 2001 after the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities. They are believed to have been hiding along the border under the protection of Pashtun tribes.

Pakistani intelligence sources said Zawahri was believed to have made visits to the Bajaur area, though on Friday he was not in Damadola, 200 km (125 miles) northwest of Islamabad. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement foreigners had been in the vicinity, and were the probable target of the attack from forces based in Afghanistan.

"As a result of this act there has been loss of innocent civilian lives which we condemn," the ministry said.

Anger has been building in Pakistan over repeated U.S. attacks, and on Saturday hundreds of protesters chanted anti-American slogans at Inayat Killi village, near Damadola.

The incident came days after Pakistan, an important ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, lodged a strong protest with U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, saying cross-border firing in the Waziristan tribal area last weekend killed eight people.

President Pervez Musharraf, addressing officials in the town of Swabi to the north of Islamabad, made only a passing reference to the attack in Bajaur, saying it was being investigated.

CORPSES: People from Damadola said no foreigners, only local people, were present and killed in Friday's attack.

"I know all the 18 people killed. There was neither Zawahri nor any other Arab among them. Rather they were all poor people of the area," Haroon Rashid, the area's National Assembly representative, was quoted by the Afghan Islamic Press news agency as saying.

U.S. sources in Washington said the remains of the dead would have to be examined to determine whether Zawahri among them. But Pakistani intelligence sources said they had no knowledge of any bodies other than those belonging to villagers, though some intelligence sources said they had heard a pro-militant Muslim cleric may have removed the corpses of some foreigners. Residents of Damadola said some visitors had come from Afghanistan to celebrate this week's Eid al-Adha festival, and one said he saw two bodies he believed belonged to outsiders.

Analysts say bin Laden's and Zawahri's network has lost much of its capability to launch attacks globally following a string of high profile arrests in Pakistan and elsewhere. While they have been put in the shade somewhat by the exploits of al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, they are still engender awe among Islamist militants and sympathizers.

Bin Laden and Zawahri teamed up in Pakistan in the late 1980s when both were involved in a jihad, or holy war, covertly backed by the United States, to end the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Zawahri, a doctor, was involved in Egypt's radical Muslim Brotherhood during the 1960s. He spent three years in jail after the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981, but was freed after being cleared by a court.

(Additional reporting by Joanne Morrison in Washington and Zeeshan Haider and Raja Asghar in Islamabad)
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Pakistan Condemns Deadly U.S. Air strike: Saturday, January 14, 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&u=/ap/20060114/ap_on_re_as/pakistan_al_qaida_attack_22

By RIAZ KHAN, Associated Press Writer

DAMADOLA, Pakistan - Pakistan on Saturday filed a formal protest with the U.S. Embassy over a deadly airstrike in which the CIA reportedly targeted al-Qaida's second-in-command as villagers denied the militant was ever there and thousands of Pakistanis protested the attack.

Pakistani officials said privately that Friday's airstrike in the northwestern village of Dalamoda, which killed at least 17 people, targeted Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant.
But Pakistan's assessment was the al-Qaida suspect was not at the site and the CIA had launched the attack based on incorrect information.

"According to preliminary investigations there was foreign presence in the area and that in all probability was targeted from across the border in Afghanistan," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "The investigations are still continuing."

"Meanwhile the Foreign Office has lodged a protest with the U.S. Ambassador in Islamabad," the ministry said.

The U.S. Embassy had not yet received any formal protest by mid-evening Saturday, embassy spokesman Rakesh Surampudi said.
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Comment: No let me get this straight. The CIA targets one al-Qaeda villain who may not even in Pakistan and kills at least 17+ innocent civilians according to Pakistani officials. No public official or intelligence officer is sure that the alleged target was even there or even killed!

A David Letterman level sick joke, wasn't that guy already killed about three times or five times the last couple of years? At what exact body count does any incidental collateral damage ‘in search of Osama’ become NOT ACCEPTABLE by a civilized humane people? 1? 17? 1700? 1,700? 17,000? Now what if that kind of ‘oops’ collateral damage ~God Forbid!~ happened to innocent American civilians here in the continental United States?!? The American people would be going postal ballistic: Nuke Em All, Let God Sort ‘Em out!

So 18+ innocent Middle Eastern non-combatants were accidentally killed {or a calculated mistake?}! Who care about them ‘over there’?! After all, it is not quite like killing White Americans by accident drone plane? Is the value of the life of a White American child more greater than a Middle Eastern child or non-White child in your mind, in your heart, in your soul?

All these kinds of unjust attacks by the USA resulting in an ‘acceptable level of collateral damage’ helps to feed the flames of pure hatred against Americans in general burning in the hearts of many millions of people in the Middle East. Many of them must wonder how we ~ the American people of the ’US’ ~ allow ‘our’ government {though it is not really ours, esp. after the Bushwack Presidential coup d’etat in 2000} to commit such international crimes against ‘them‘? Do we American citizens share any blame or have any responsibility for the actions of ‘our’ government?
Are apathetic Americans totally innocent and blameless? Don’t worry it can get worse and it will get worse before it gets any better.

For example: Has the historical and traditional fear, hatred and suspicion of White Americans for Black Afro-Americans been transferred to Middle-Eastern peoples? And how many Latinos or Hispanics actually look like Middle East people? If Americans consider America to be the ‘leader of the free world’ then let ‘US” Americans lead with tender care, honest concern and humane compassion in our own personal lives. How long do Americans think they will mindlessly escape the sudden terrors of suicide bombers in American super-malls, in open-air music concerts, in mass sporting events and other large public gatherings? Will we forever escape our own domestic versions of collateral damage?

I suspect there is strange fruit falling off from the tree of life that may are not willing to face that can cause a rotten stench on people who are not even aware let alone prepared. Being prepared we can understand and deal much better with complicated situations.

Take Care of All Your Loved Ones… there a storm a comin’
+Peta de Aztlan
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