ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan has arrested Ahmed Khalfan
Ghailani, a Tanzanian al-Qaida suspect with a $5 million reward on
his head in connection with the dual 1998 bombings at U.S.
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the interior minister said Friday.
Ghailani was arrested on Sunday in the eastern city of Gujrat
along with at least 15 others, Interior Minister Faisal Saleh
Hayyat told Pakistan’s Geo television network.
Nice timing for the news release.
…
Pakistan captures high-level al Qaeda operative
Thursday, July 29, 2004 Posted: 3:44 PM EDT (1944 GMT)
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) – Pakistani security forces have captured a high-level al Qaeda operative in a raid in central Pakistan, Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said Thursday.
Hayat said the east African, who was sought internationally, was captured “a few days back,” and his capture shows “Pakistan is committed to fighting terrorism.”
The man is being questioned, Hayat said.
“We have been quite successful … in apprehending key figures,” Hayat said.
"Hayat said the east African, who was sought internationally, was captured "a few days back," and his capture shows "Pakistan is committed to fighting terrorism."
The man is being questioned, Hayat said."
A few days back? I bet those have been a real nifty few days. Undoubtedly the Pakistani officials are giving him milk and cookies, and asking pretty please......
Didn’t the New Republic article “July Surprise” say that the Bushies are pressuring Mush to arrest a “top” man to coincide with the Democratic convention?
Below it is in full:
**July Surprise?
Pakistan for Bush**
By John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman & Massoud Ansari*
New Republic
July 7, 2004
Late last month, President Bush lost his greatest advantage in his bid for reelection. A poll conducted by ABC News and The Washington Post discovered that challenger John Kerry was running even with the president on the critical question of whom voters trust to handle the war on terrorism. Largely as a result of the deteriorating occupation of Iraq, Bush lost what was, in April, a seemingly prohibitive 21-point advantage on his signature issue. But, even as the president’s poll numbers were sliding, his administration was implementing a plan to insure the public’s confidence in his hunt for Al Qaeda.
This spring, the administration significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban’s Mullah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. A succession of high-level American officials–from outgoing CIA Director George Tenet to Secretary of State Colin Powell to Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca to State Department counterterrorism chief Cofer Black to a top CIA South Asia official–have visited Pakistan in recent months to urge General Pervez Musharraf’s government to do more in the war on terrorism. In April, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, publicly chided the Pakistanis for providing a “sanctuary” for Al Qaeda and Taliban forces crossing the Afghan border. “The problem has not been solved and needs to be solved, the sooner the better,” he said.
This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November. The Bush administration denies it has geared the war on terrorism to the electoral calendar. “Our attitude and actions have been the same since September 11 in terms of getting high-value targets off the street, and that doesn’t change because of an election,” says National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack. But THE NEW REPUBLIC has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs by the election. According to one source in Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), “The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections.” Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations–according to a recently departed intelligence official, “no timetable[s]” were discussed in 2002 or 2003–but the November election is apparently bringing a new deadline pressure to the hunt. Another official, this one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which is responsible for internal security, explains, “The Musharraf government has a history of rescuing the Bush administration. They now want Musharraf to bail them out when they are facing hard times in the coming elections.” (These sources insisted on remaining anonymous. Under Pakistan’s Official Secrets Act, an official leaking information to the press can be imprisoned for up to ten years.)
A third source, an official who works under ISI’s director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed TNR that the Pakistanis “have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must.” What’s more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: “The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during
meetings in Washington.” Says McCormack: “I’m aware of no such comment.” **But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that “it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July”–the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston. **
The Bush administration has matched this public and private pressure with enticements and implicit threats. During his March visit to Islamabad, Powell designated Pakistan a major non-NATO ally, a status that allows its military to purchase a wider array of U.S. weaponry. Powell pointedly refused to criticize Musharraf for pardoning nuclear physicist A.Q. Khan–who, the previous month, had admitted exporting nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and Libya–declaring Khan’s transgressions an “internal” Pakistani issue. In addition, the administration is pushing a five-year, $3 billion aid package for Pakistan through Congress over Democratic concerns about the country’s proliferation of nuclear technology and lack of democratic reform.
But Powell conspicuously did not commit the United States to selling F-16s to Pakistan, which it desperately wants in order to tilt the regional balance of power against India. And the Pakistanis fear that, if they don’t produce an HVT, they won’t get the planes. Equally, they fear that, if they don’t deliver, either Bush or a prospective Kerry administration would turn its attention to the apparent role of Pakistan’s security establishment in facilitating Khan’s illicit proliferation network. One Pakistani general recently in Washington confided in a journalist, “If we don’t find these guys by the election, they are going to stick this whole nuclear mess up our asshole.”
Pakistani perceptions of U.S. politics reinforce these worries. “In Pakistan, there has been a folk belief that, whenever there’s a Republican administration in office, relations with Pakistan have been very good,” says Khalid Hasan, a U.S. correspondent for the Lahore-based Daily Times. By contrast, there’s also a “folk belief that the Democrats are always pro-India.” Recent history has validated those beliefs. The Clinton administration inherited close ties to Pakistan, forged a decade earlier in collaboration against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But, by the time Clinton left office, the United States had tilted toward India, and Pakistan was under U.S. sanctions for its nuclear activities. All this has given Musharraf reason not just to respond to pressure from Bush, but to feel invested in him–and to worry that Kerry, who called the Khan affair a “disaster,” and who has proposed tough new curbs on nuclear proliferation, would adopt an icier line.
Bush’s strategy could work. In large part because of the increased U.S. pressure, Musharraf has, over the last several months, significantly increased military activity in the tribal areas–regions that enjoy considerable autonomy from Islamabad and where, until Musharraf sided with the United States in the war on terrorism, Pakistani soldiers had never set foot in the nation’s 50-year history. Thousands of Pakistani troops fought a pitched battle in late March against tribesmen and their Al Qaeda affiliates in South Waziristan in hopes of capturing Zawahiri. The fighting escalated significantly in June. Attacks on army camps in the tribal areas brought fierce retaliation, leaving over 100 tribal and foreign militants and Pakistani soldiers dead in three days. Last month, Pakistan killed a powerful Waziristan warlord and Qaeda ally, Nek Mohammed, in a dramatic rocket attack that villagers said bore American fingerprints. (They claim a U.S. spy plane had been circling overhead.) Through these efforts, the Pakistanis could bring in bin Laden, Mullah Omar, or Zawahiri–a significant victory in the war on terrorism that would bolster Bush’s reputation among voters.
But there is a reason many Pakistanis and some American officials had previously been reluctant to carry the war on terrorism into the tribal areas. A Pakistani offensive in that region, aided by American high-tech weaponry and perhaps Special Forces, could unite tribal chieftains against the central government and precipitate a border war without actually capturing any of the HVTs. Military action in the tribal areas “has a domestic fallout, both religious and ethnic,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Mian Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri complained to the Los Angeles Times last year. Some American intelligence officials agree. “Pakistan just can’t risk a civil war in that area of their country. They can’t afford a western border that is unstable,” says a senior intelligence official, who anonymously authored the recent Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and who says he has not heard that the current pressures on Pakistan are geared to the election. “We may be at the point where [Musharraf] has done almost as much as he can.”
Pushing Musharraf to go after Al Qaeda in the tribal areas may be a good idea despite the risks. But, if that is the case, it was a good idea in 2002 and 2003. Why the switch now? Top Pakistanis think they know: This year, the president’s reelection is at stake.
Massoud Ansari reported from Karachi.
About the Authors: John B. Judis is a senior editor at TNR and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Spencer Ackerman is an assistant editor at TNR. Massoud Ansari is a senior reporter for Newsline, a leading Pakistani news magazine.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by underthedome: *
Nice timing for the news release.
[/QUOTE]
:D
Maybe they'll even things out by announcing the capture of Osama during the GOP Convention.
:D
You think maybe GW ought to call a "time out" in the war on terror until the election is over so that such successes won't unfairly cripple the Kerry campaign?
Not at all myvoice, Pakistan did good here. I don't see this taking anything away from Democratic Convention as this guy is #8 on the list and has low name recognition with the American public. It is interesting that Pakistan decided today to release news of his capture, I'm sure they wouldn't mind taking some of the light off Kerry as some of their gov. members have openly supported Bush's re-election.
i dont see how Pakistan capturing this guy is helping the Republican agenda and taking the spotlight away from democrats or DNC. Both seem to be on the same page when it comes to terrorism, its the approach where the differences come.
Ahmed Ghailani who???
I guess that sums it up.
God riddance, one more terrorist captured. Is the news timed for political gain? Who cares. Kerry is gonna be the worst anti-climax of the DNC, anyway.
wah ji wah hamari police bari efficient ho gai hae
they can’t catch the small criminals who are doing suicide bombing in masjids, who r killing innocent civilians and attacked our president n corps commander, who are stealing cars everyday, committing dacoities in the daylight
LEKIN
they just arrested the $25 millions dollar terrorist; Ahmed Ghailani
woo hoo
i dont get this. WHY is our government acting like a slave? why cant we just tell the Americans that we’ve got enough domestic problems, to leave us alone, and why cant we just take care of our own problems first rather than wasting our energies fulfilling amreeki demands?
i thought Mush said Pakistan FIRST right? then why is he hell bent on appeasing America. he just wants to secure his own kursi?
when are we going to develop some honorable principles against which we can stand? as a Pakistani im ASHAMED at what our govt is doing, im just totally ASHAMED
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by irem: *
when are we going to develop some honorable principles against which we can stand?
[/QUOTE]
Let me get this straight.. You want to develop some honorable principles, then you want to stand 'against' them? Hmmm. That sounds like every politician in Pakistan :)
Faisal bhai wohi, you know, stand by, against, same deal
im a fob :Pagri: my angrezi is a bit weak 
Acha.
Per point is you should definitely run in the elections. Definitely. The only problem is you don't like elections. Kiya karein?
Pakistan ends up accepting American pressure because there is a bull dog in the Eastern neigborhood that America uses to pressurize us.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Faisal: *
Acha.
Per point is you should definitely run in the elections. Definitely. The only problem is you don't like elections. Kiya karein?
[/QUOTE]
Et tu Brutus, Faisal bhai aap mera mazaak ura rhay haen? :) :( ura leyn, ive become thick skinned so if it makes u happy go right ahead aur jitna dil karay ura leyn mera mazzak :D :( :)
Being a loving Pakistani Citizen .. I want my share from those 25 million. Even if it is a few hundred thousands.
Yeah, show me the money!!!
On a serious note, I hope Pakistan catchs Osama, before or after election really doesn't matter to me.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by ahmadjee: *
Being a loving Pakistani Citizen .. I want my share from those 25 million. Even if it is a few hundred thousands.
Yeah, show me the money!!!
On a serious note, I hope Pakistan catchs Osama, before or after election really doesn't matter to me.
[/QUOTE]
If Osama is still alive, U think the US doesn't know where he is?
Just like they knew all along where Saddam was, and had him cornered and made him appear at the right time, Osama, if he is alive, will be unearthed by them at the right time too ;) Just wait and watch
Ye sab amreeka ki dramaybaazi hae aur kuch bhee nai
irem bibi, jasoosi kahaniaN kum parha karaiN.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by ahmadjee: *
irem bibi, jasoosi kahaniaN kum parha karaiN.
[/QUOTE]
ahmadjee, aaNkhein kholein
^ :)