(AKI) The weekend suicide bomb attack targeting Pakistan's interior minister has shone the spotlight on the man heading the only civilian body fully trusted by Western intelligence regarding the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Interior minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao is genuinely anti-Islamist and pro-Western and his special investigation unit works jointly with the American FBI - unlike Pakistan's powerful armed forces and intelligence services - involved in data collection and probes into al-Qaeda and Taliban activities in Pakistan. The professionalism of the interior ministry investigators has exposed many Taliban sanctuaries and safe havens within Pakistan and propelled Sherpao to the number one slot in the Taliban's list of most hated political figures. While President Musharraf may be denounced by the fundamentalists as a lapdog of the West, Sherpao and his staff have been inflicting the real damage.
Well-placed sources say that a new cell of Uzbeks, established in the valley of Shawal in North Waziristan, was behind the attack. After a massacre of Uzbek militants belonging to al-Qaeda in South Waziristan, by Taliban commander Haji Nazir, most of the Uzbek fighters have either fled to Afghanistan or moved to the Shawal valley of North Waziristan, where pro-Al-Qaeda Taliban have provided them a safe sanctuary.
At least 29 people were killed in North West Frontier Province on Saturday, when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives just a few metres from the minister and his son, who both received minor injuries. The incident happened at a public rally in the Charsada district organized by Sherpao's faction of the Pakistan Peoples Party. As he finished his address to the 500 strong crowd and approached his car to return to Peshawar, the provincial capital, an unidentified person ran towards him and blew up himself up, said an eyewitnesses.
An ethnic Pashtun, Aftab Sherpao has been the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party led by former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto and also been the Chief Minister of North West Frontier Province in the past. After a successful military career he was encouraged to enter politics after the murder of his elder brother Hayat Muhammad Khan Sherpao in a bomb blast in 1975. He is anti-Islamist and was once known for his left wing political ideas, closer to the Soviet Union during the Cold War period. This made him a staunch opponent of the Mujahadeen who were fighting the Russian presence in Afghanistan during the 1980s.
Aftab Sherpao left the Pakistan Peoples Party(PPP) led by Benazir Bhutto in 2002 and joined forces with President Musharraf. He then formed his own Pakistan Peoples Party (Sherpao faction) and while his pro-Russian left wing ideas evolved into a secular social democrat philosophy he remained a staunch enemy of Taliban and al-Qaeda elements. This has seen him oppose recent peace deals negotiated with the Pakistani Taliban in Pakistani tribal areas, something which is backed by the military establishment.
His relation with President Pervez Musharraf is a marriage of convenience for both men. Sherpao wants to stay in power and out of jail as corruption charges against him, which forced him to flee briefly to Britain in 2002, have been shelved but not completely wiped out.