Title: 'Taliban move freely in Pakistan, regrouping'
Author:  
Publication: Chalo Mumbai
Date: May 27, 2002
URL: http://www.chalomumbai.com/asp/article.asp?cat_id=29&art_id=24929&cat_code=2F574841545F535F4F4E5F4D554D4241492F5441415A415F4B4841424152

Two former high-ranking Taliban talk of reorganizing their militant religious movement and describe a recovering al-Qaeda - all while they sit secretly inside Pakistan, Washington's front-line ally in the war on international terrorism.

In an interview with a news agency, they said the Afghan-Pakistan border can't be sealed to stop the movement of militants. Even more advantageous, they said, is the split within Pakistan's powerful spy agency, the ISI, between those who share the Taliban's ideology and those who support Pakistan's alliance with America.

One of the two, Fazul Rabi Said-Rahman, was the Taliban army corps commander for eastern Afghanistan. During the last six months of Taliban rule he was chief of police in Paktia province, an area still considered by the US-led anti-terrorist coalition to be harbouring fugitive Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters.

The other man, Obeidullah, was an assistant to the Taliban's intelligence chief Qari Ahmadullah, who was killed by a US bomb in January in eastern Afghanistan. Speaking in Pashtu through an interpreter, they said the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, and al-Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden, are both alive, but offered no specifics on the Saudi dissident who leads al-Qaeda. They said that they had met with Omar within the last two months "in the mountains in Afghanistan."

They did not claim to have seen bin Laden or explain how they knew he 
was 
alive. "He is waiting for the next big attack and then he will show 
his 
body," Obeidullah said. Both men warned of suicide attacks on the 
United 
States and Britain in retaliation for the war in Afghanistan, but 
again 
offered no specifics.

In an earlier meeting, Obeidullah had made a similar vague warning 
about a 
suicide attack. He said at the second meeting that he was speaking of 
the 
May 8 bus bombing in Karachi that killed 14 people, including 11 
French 
engineers who were in Pakistan to build an Agosta submarine for the 
Pakistani navy.

"Before the Karachi attack I said something was being planned, 
something 
would happen in Pakistan," Obeidullah said. He said the attack was 
staged by 
al-Qaeda and Pakistanis opposed to President Pervez Musharraf's 
support for 
the US. Said-Rahman said some Pakistani groups are working with 
al-Qaeda 
against the coalition and against Musharraf.

"Everyone is working together - Harakat-ul Jihad, Harakat-ul 
Mujahedeen, 
al-Qaeda," he said, referring to two Pakistani-based Islamic 
extremist 
groups that have been outlawed by Musharraf. "People are angry with 
Musharraf because he is allowing the kafirs (non-Muslims) to destroy 
everything in Afghanistan. Muslims everywhere are angry."

In recent days, reports have surfaced in the United States about 
possible 
targets of terrorist attacks.
Said-Rahman said the reports were true, but wouldn't elaborate or say 
where 
he got his information.
"We have information that there will be some big suicide attacks in 
the 
United States," he said. "We know it will happen. We have 
information. We 
know the situation. The Americans and the British are the big 
enemies. They 
have destroyed Afghanistan."

Both Taliban officials said Omar is overseeing a reorganization of 
the 
religious movement, which Said-Rahman said was being renamed Al 
Emarah 
Islamia Afghanistan or Islamic State of Afghanistan, which was the 
name 
previously used by the Taliban for their country. Now Said-Rahman 
said it 
will also identify their movement.

He said Omar had issued orders appointing Mullah Usmani, the 
Taliban's 
former Kandahar corps commander, as his replacement should he die. 
Usmani 
was chosen "because right now, ours is a military battle and Usmani 
is a 
military man," Said-Rahman said.

He said the Taliban's former finance minister, Aga Jan Mohtasim, had 
been 
named to lead the movement's ideological revival. Obeidullah said 
Omar has 
been in contact with Taliban warriors in their mountain hide-outs in 
Afghanistan and has addressed small shuras, or councils, in several 
provinces at
secret locations.

Without offering any details, Said-Rahman said al-Qaeda also is 
slowly 
recuperating with an emphasis on a military and financial 
resurrection. 
Obeidullah said Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, has a hard 
time 
tracking Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives. "We know the ISI has 
problems of 
its own," he said.
"There are some who are with us and some who are against us. Those 
who are 
with us are having a hard time."

Musharraf has purged some Taliban supporters from the agency, 
intelligence 
sources have said.