[1]On May 29, 2011, one week after the release of his book in the UK, Syed Saleem Shahzad was abducted, days after writing an article suggesting that insiders in the Pakistan Navy had colluded with Al Qaeda in an attack on Pakistan’s leading naval base at Karachi, PNS Mehran. The next day he was brutally murdered and a day later, on May 31, his battered body was recovered from a canal 60 km away from Pakistan’s capital Islamabad.
May 2011 literally became a month of mayhem for not only stepped up explosions of gunfire and bombs in Pakistan, but also for exposures of long-hidden facts and the shocks they caused to Pakistan’s Army, its floundering civilian government and mostly to its awaam (people). While the killing of the world’s most wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden on May 2, in a surprise attack by US special forces in the mansion at Abbottabad exposed yet another major deception of Pak Army, Shahzad’s book exposed many more about its various nefarious connections. The very well-planned strike on PNS Mehran, two days after Shahzad’s article appeared online in which he warned of a possibility of strike by Al Qaeda in Pakistan, and after the release of his book which already contained many embarrassing exposures of Pakistan’s military, which may have egged his killers to expedite his elimination to prevent many more articles elaborating on already exposed linkages.
The exposures caused by Osama’s killing and attack on Mehran were just precursors to the vast range of wheels within wheels and cross-connections elaborated in Shahzad’s book which are of great significance to India, the US, Afghanistan and, of course, Pakistan.
US President Barack Obama may well have delivered on his campaign promise to kill Osama bin Laden, but during the decade that he remained on the run, he was not really a functional Al Qaeda strategist.
This book introduces and examines the new generation of Al Qaeda leaders who have been behind most recent attacks.
Shahzad began his narrative by informing that while he had never worked for well-funded international or mainstream media, his functioning as an independent reporter for what he referred to as alternate media, suited his temperament and thus brought him into contact with “those close to the bottom of the ladder”, when he met them. Some examples: Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri, beginning as a Kashmiri terrorist, later commanded his own “313 brigade group”, eventually became member of Al Qaeda’s shura (council) and turned out to be a major player in the November 26, 2008 attack on Mumbai. Sirajuddin Haqqani and Qari Ziaur Rehaman, the most dangerous of terrorist commanders in Afghanistan. Of special significance and vital importance to India are Shahzad’s meetings with Captain Khurram Askhiq, who had resigned from the Pakistan Army’s special services group and joined the Taliban and whose “imprint on Al Qaeda was unmistakeable”. While Khurram was killed by the UK Army at Helmand, his brother Major Haroon and friend, Major Abdul Rehman (both retired), were the two main planners for Mumbai’s 26/11. Also involved in the plot was Kashmiri. It was his idea to expand the ambit of attacks against India, so that India and Pakistan are driven to war, which would bring operations against the Al Qaeda to a grinding halt.
Some revealing excerpts from the book are indeed relevant:
l The Mumbai operation was actually the revival of an old Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) plan. The idea was to deflect the Pakistan Army away from Waziristan and get it to fight India instead. This nearly succeeded: ‘Pakistan’s militant leaders Mullah Fazlullah and Baitullah Mehsud announced that they would fight alongside Pakistan’s armed forces in an India-Pakistan war, and the director general of ISI, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, confirmed this understanding in his briefing to national and foreign correspondents, when he called Fazlullah and Baitullah Mehsud Pakistan’s strategic assets.’ (p. 95).
l Al Qaeda’s central hero was Captain Khurram Ashiq of the Pakistan Army who was followed by his brother Major Haroon Askhiq to become Al Qaeda’s hand that wielded the sword: Khurram was an assault commander of the elite anti-terrorist Zarrar Coy from Pakistan’s Special Service Group (SSG) in 2001 when he flipped after 9/11. Because of his Salafi background he was shaped into a warrior by Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT). He wrote to Saleem Shahzad about his brother too. “Major Haroon Ashiq hung up his boots right after 9/11. On his release from service, he joined LeT. One of my unit officers Major Abdul Rahman also followed suit. I joined the outfit soon after, without caring for the consequences”. (p. 83).
l For Captain Khurram faith came before country. While on a UN mission in Sierra Leone he clearly demonstrated it: “Khurram built a mosque and a madrasa in Sierra Leone, despite the opposition of his commander, Brigadier Ahmad Shuja Pasha, later chief of the ISI”. (p. 85).
l Both brothers had joined the LeT, but had soon “re-alised that the LeT was just an extension of Pakistan’s armed forces”. (p. 86).
l As an Al Qaeda terrorist, Haroon enjoyed contacts inside the Army: “Haroon developed a silencer for the AK-47. This became an essential component of Al Qaeda’s special guerrilla operations. He then visited China to procure night vision glasses. The biggest task was to clear them through the customs in Pakistan, Haroon called on his friend Captain Farooq, who was (then) President Musharraf’s security officer. Farooq went to the airport in the President’s official car and received Haroon at the immigration counter. In the presence of Farooq, nobody dared touch Haroon’s luggage, and the night vision glasses arrived in Pakistan without any hassle (Farooq was a member of the Hizbut Tahrir, a fact discovered by the military intelligence as late as nine months after his posting as Musharraf’s security officer. After being spotted, he was briefly arrested and then retired from the Pakistan Army)”. (p. 88).
l Al Qaeda targeted Nato supplies through Haroon in 2008: “Haroon travelled through North Waziristan to Karachi. When night fell, he stayed in Army messes in the countryside. Being an ex-Army officer he was allowed that facility. He spoke English and Urdu with an unmistakable military accent”. (p. 92). He took revenge on Major General Ameer Faisal Alavi because the latter had killed a lot of Al Qaeda men — including Abdur Rehman Kennedy — as leader of a Pakistan Army assault on Angor Adda in North Waziristan. Haroon ambushed Alavi in Islamabad “jumping out of his car and killing Alavi with his army revolver”. (p. 93). Haroon believed in the Ghazwa-e-Hind (Battle for India) hadith and thought the end of the world was near, and the advent of the Mahdi was at hand with the help of the armies of Khurasan (p. 200).
Haroon is now in Adiala jail in Rawalpindi after failing to kidnap an Ahmadi, Sarwar Khan. (The police officer in Adiala jail told Saleem Shahzad he had started admiring his prisoner.) In custody he admitted to killing Major General Alavi and kidnapping Hindu filmmaker Satish Anand with the help of one Major Basit from Karachi. After he discovered that Anand had no money to give he released him on orders from Al Qaeda’s Ilyas Kashmiri “if he embraced Islam” which Anand immediately did. Later Al Qaeda decided that to refill its empty coffers it will abduct only non-Muslims, in particular, Ahmadis.
Having read and reviewed books by at least three more bold Pakistani authors, Mohammad Amir Rana (Gateway to Terrorism, 2003 and Seeds of Terrorism, New Millenium, 2005), Hassan Abbas (Pakistan’s Drift Into Extremism: Allah, the Army and America’s War on Terror, Pentagon Press, 2005) and Amir Mir (Talibanisation of Pakistan, Pentagon Press, 2009), and having met Abbas some years ago in Delhi, one knows the price such authors have to pay to remain alive. While Abbas moved to the US, Rana and Mir are living very cautiously in Pakistan, another author, Mujahid Hussain (Punjabi Taliban, Pentagon Press, 2011 — about to be released in India) has recently moved to Belgium.
With his persistence, courage and reputation, Shahzad, as an investigative reporter who worked as Pakistan Bureau Chief of Asia Times Online, had unparalleled access to Al Qaeda and Taliban commanders, as well as within the ISI. He had been both a hostage and a guest of the Taliban, which gave him a unique insight into the organisation’s internal structures. Shahzad’s work was praised by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton for “bringing to light the troubles extremism poses to Pakistan’s stability”. Syed Saleem Shahzad (1970-2011) is survived by his wife and three children. His book and articles must be translated into other languages and read by all watchers of terrorism the world over.
Anil Bhat, a retired Army officer, is a defence and security analyst based in New Delhi
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[1] http://103.241.136.51/bookjpg-328