As helicopters circled overhead and gunfire crackled in the distance, a Pakistani general said today many of the al-Qaida fighters surrounded near the Afghan border were Chechen or Uzbek, and he was uncertain whether they included Osama bin Laden's Egyptian deputy Ayman al-Zawahri. Although Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain hedged on the identity of the senior figure, he said he still believed a "high-value" terrorist target remained in the trap and had not escaped across the border into Afghanistan.
| No doubt, somebody has to stick around to give orders. But if Ayman was in town, my guess is that he left during one of the cease-fires ... |
The operation in the arid, rugged terrain of South Waziristan raged into its fifth day with no sign of surrender from 400 to 500 foreign fighters and local tribesmen facing a thunderous barrage of artillery by night and Cobra helicopter gunship fire by day.
| Quite a demonstration of the Pak army's competence when presented with an actual military problem, rather than just staging a coup... |
Hussain said 5,000 to 6,000 Pakistani troops were deployed in Pakistan's largest anti-terror campaign, conducted across a 25-square-mile swath of territory within 10 miles of the Afghan frontier.
| I assume Task Force 121 is waiting happily on the other side. |
About 2,500 soldiers were fighting the militants and the rest conducting searches, he said. Pakistani officials said a dozen American personnel are helping with technical intelligence and surveillance. "I would not rule out any possibility, but with this level of resistance, even after 48 hours (of bombardment), I believe the high-value target is still there," Hussain told about 40 journalists flown by Pakistan's military to this town about three miles from the battle. He said the fighters were a blend of foreigners and members of the local Yargul Khel tribe, and that this was the first of a series of operations to clear the lawless tribal region of militants.
| Basically, it's al-Qaeda and whatever's left of the IMU with their Pashtun flunkies. Just like old times ... |
The military also showed journalists in Wana belongings and equipment seized from a Chechen fighter who was killed, including grenades, detonators, a traditional pakor hat and prayer beads. Also displayed were four locally made rifles, a dozen grenades, AK-47s and boxes of Soviet-era ammunition seized from tribesmen. The Pakistani army has intercepted some radio conversations of militants inside the encampment -- mostly in the Chechen and Uzbek languages and some in Arabic. One radio intercept in Uzbek or Chechen said a man wounded when he tried unsuccessfully to flee the area in a vehicle on the first day of the operation would need "four men to carry him and 10 or 11 people to protect him," Hussain revealed. That raised suspicion the man was important and "most likely Chechen or Uzbek, as the intercepts were in those languages," he said. Al-Zawahri is Egyptian, and would be expected to have mostly Arabic-speaking protectors. But Hussain said it was possible a figure like al-Zawahri would be guarded by fighters of different nationalities. He also said the protected man could have been a top local tribesman.
| That last part fits with the Debka account, at any rate. Our public knowledge of Binny's praetorian guard is scant at best except for the number of controllers that keep coming out of it, but there are said to be Chechens in it. |
Last year, Russian authorities revealed that al-Zawahri was detained in Dagestan in 1997 after visiting Chechnya under an assumed name and held in a pretrial detention center for a few months. He was released and expelled from Russia after authorities failed to establish his identity.
| To where? Egypt already had a price on his head ... |
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