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The Pakistan connection
Back in March, British intelligence became aware of an expanding terrorist plot on home soil that looked like a local pick-up operation organized by young and angry British Muslims. There may have been connections to Pakistan but authorities doubted any al-Qaeda links right up until July 12 when they exposed the London-based plan to blow 12 airliners out of the sky. Theories of an al-Qaeda hierarchy were out of fashion. Too many of al-Qaeda's lines of communication had been shattered in the war on terror. Or so goes the conventional wisdom. But the facts seem to suggest otherwise: that al-Qaeda, through a series of Pakistani militant groups, is operating out of Pakistan itself.In March, just as British suspicions were being raised, a British Muslim named Rashid Rauf was in Pakistan when he was put under surveillance by Islamabad's security agency, the ISI. Later, Rauf was apparently with another British Muslim when he met a powerful Pakistani Islamist operative named Matiur Rehman. As a result of the meeting, money was wired to bank accounts in London. Four months later, in July, unbeknownst to Rauf, Pakistani agents arrested a Taliban-linked Uzbek militant in Wana, in the heart of Waziristan, al-Qaeda territory on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. His interrogation, according to The Scotsman newspaper, led to the arrest of two British Muslims in Pakistan. One seems to have been Rauf, who was apprehended Aug. 4, outside an Internet cafe, in the town Zhob, in Taliban territory in Pakistan's Baluchistan region. Posted by: john 2006-08-31 |
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