It looks like our army caught a very important character. This Aqeel who led the attack seems to be a key figure in the urban militancy, being the individual who organized some high-level attacks recently rather than just an ordinary foot soldier.
I hope and pray that the author of the article below is right, and that the reason such an individual took part in an attack personally was that he realised his side is loosing and wanted to go out in a blaze of “glory”.
The end of the Taliban in Pakistan will be a win for everyone (except for the Taliban, of course, but they deserve to die slow, agonizing deaths)
Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan
Aqeel alias Dr Usman has been caught in a seriously wounded state after the terrorist attack on the GHQ by his Amjad Farooqi Group. A “mastermind” of several past terrorist attacks, he decided to become a part of the team that was sure to die in its attempt to enter the GHQ. Why did he do that?
From his dossier of activities, Dr Usman was not an ordinary terrorist led by the nose by his handlers. He was himself the handler. He knew that the attack on the GHQ would not get very far. It was to serve as a symbolic Al Qaeda assertion of power at a time when the world thought it was weakened by the reversals suffered by the Taliban. He knew it was going to be his last act. He did try to blow himself up with an anti-personnel mine but survived the explosion and was captured in a seriously wounded condition.
Aqeel alias Dr Usman was from a locality near Kahuta and has been missing from his home for a long time. One reason he never returned home was that he was a deserter from Army’s Medical Corps and knew that the army would catch him and punish him. He was taken to the Tribal Areas by Ilyas Kashmiri, Al Qaeda’s operations commander and became a warlord in North Waziristan. Kashmiri had also used another retired army officer Major Ashiq to kill a retired commando officer in Islamabad who had taken part in the assault on Lal Masjid in 2007.
Dr Usman had also killed the Surgeon General of Pakistan army, Lt-General Mushtaq Baig, in February 2008, standing aside from the operation. He similarly stood by as his boys attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore. He had also masterminded the missile attack on the plane of General Musharraf, but he never directly became a part of the suicide-squad. It is also difficult to believe that his bosses wanted the “mastermind” to become a “suicide-bomber”.
The only credible explanation is that he had come to the end of his tether, realising that the Taliban were under siege and were about to be attacked in South Waziristan and thought he should end his role of a mastermind with a supreme “act of martyrdom”. Now that he is in custody — one hopes fervently that he survives his wounds — the interrogators will surely get to the bottom of the mystery, and may even learn from him important strategic secrets on the eve of the military operation in South Waziristan. *