| Once again Dan bowls over the Rantburg editorial staff. |
Al Qaeda-linked fighters battling Pakistani troops along the border with Afghanistan are sophisticated and brutal combatants who carry satellite phones and mutilate their enemies' corpses, according to a profile unveiled by an army commander. Major General Niaz Khattak, field commander in the mountainous frontier district of South Waziristan, said fighters hiding there had falsely convinced local tribes that they were waging a "jihad," or holy war, against "infidels." In the first-ever profile presented to journalists, the general who has led several offensives against Al Qaeda-linked militants this year painted a picture of hardened, well-trained, and brutal fighters with little adherence to Islamic values.
Officials suspect some 600 to 700 mainly Uzbek and Chechen fighters allied to Al Qaeda are still hiding in the area out of those who fled Afghanistan in late 2001 when the Taleban were toppled. Some of those already killed and captured had Uzbek, Turkmen and Chechen features, he said. Khattak dismissed claims by opponents of the operation that the central Asians are veteran fighters of the 1979 to 1989 battle to oust occupying Soviet troops from Afghanistan. "Among them are some genuine believers who may have been here during the Afghan jihad, but they are few," the general said. "Most of them are aged 18 to 25. Where were they during the Afghan jihad?," he pointed out during a briefing to reporters in South Waziristan's main town Wana. "They are not remnants of part of jihad against Russians, they are a new influx." Khattak described the militants as "very advanced, educated and militarily well-trained" fighters who had overpowered local Wazir tribesmen. "They started proving their dominance intellectually, socially, physically over the Wazirs and the Wazirs had to take them inevitably as their military leaders," he said.
| Like that was hard to do. |
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