Title: Al-Qaeda regroups in Pakistan's no-man's land
          Tribal leaders giving 'our Muslim brothers' safe haven
Author: Jack Kelley
Publication: USA Today
Date: June 24, 2002
URL: http://contact.usatoday.com/usatonline/20020624/4217023s.htm

GHULAM KHAN, Pakistan -- For $100, the two barbers in this border village will trim a traveler's hair, shave his beard, give him a set of clothes and help him slip pass checkpoints manned by Pakistani police.

Since March, all of their customers -- an average of 14 a week -- have been al-Qaeda fighters, they say.

''We have a duty to keep our Muslim brothers out of the hands of the American infidels and their Pakistani puppets,'' says barber Ikhlaq Bakhtiar, 36, owner of the Marhaba Salon. ''These Arab brothers are doing the work of God. Their work is far from finished.''

Despite U.S.-led raids to capture them, up to 1,000 al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters have crossed from Afghanistan into Pakistan's tribal areas since the Taliban regime was ousted in November. Here, in a mountainous no-man's land where Pakistan wields little authority, al-Qaeda fighters have reassembled and are planning new attacks against the West, U.S. officials say. Tribes in the border region, once part of Afghanistan, have close ethnic ties to their Afghan counterparts. Their loyalty to al-Qaeda is no secret.

Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are believed to be hiding in mountain caves in the Northwest Frontier province. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that bin Laden might be in Pakistan's western tribal areas. An al-Qaeda spokesman said in an audiotape broadcast over the weekend on Al-Jazeera satellite TV network that bin Laden will soon make a TV appearance. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith also told an unidentified interviewer, ''We are going to carry out attacks on America.''

After fleeing Afghanistan, many of the al-Qaeda fighters move on to the Pakistani cities of Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad to coordinate attacks, recruit members and solicit funds, U.S. officials say. Others are staging terrorist attacks independently or with militant groups in Pakistan, they add.

Four attacks against Westerners in Pakistan since January, including a car bombing outside the U.S. Consulate in Karachi that killed 12 and injured more than 40 Pakistanis on June 14, have been carried out by groups linked to al-Qaeda, U.S. and Pakistani officials say.

Publicly, Pakistani officials deny their country is being used as an al-Qaeda base. Privately, they and U.S. officials concede that rather than eliminating al-Qaeda's terrorist network, the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan has dispersed it, making its members harder to track and their activities harder to predict. ''Al-Qaeda has found a home here,'' says Muhammad Yaqoob Khan, who leads the 3,000-member Gurbaz tribe that straddles the Afghan-Pakistani border. ''If not Afghanistan, then Pakistan. They are welcome.''

Protecting al-Qaeda

Dozens of U.S. Army Green Berets and CIA paramilitary units, assisted by Pakistani troops, are conducting cross-border raids aimed at capturing bin Laden, Zawahiri and their al-Qaeda fighters. They're aided by nearly 12,000 Pakistani soldiers who guard the country's 1,510-mile border with Afghanistan.

Their efforts are being thwarted by the cultural bonds and ethnic loyalties between the Afghan and Pakistani tribes living in the border area. About 15 million of Pakistan's 145 million people live in the Northwest Frontier, the Tribal Areas and the provinces of North and South Waziristan.

The terrain along Pakistan's northwest border is forbidding. It varies from parched deserts with summer temperatures up to 124 degrees to mountains that are snow-capped nearly year around; the highest peaks top 15,000 feet.

Under an agreement with Pakistan's government, the border areas are run by tribal leaders. Islamabad has a provincial governor here, but it's the tribal leaders who have real power.

Many belong to the Pashtun tribe and subscribe to the milmastia , or hospitality, code that demands that they protect those seeking shelter in their territory, even if it means risking their own lives. Smugglers, gunrunners and drug dealers from Afghanistan and Pakistan's cities often flee here, which gives this region a reputation for lawlessness. Nearly everyone is armed.

Foreigners and even Pakistanis from outside the tribal areas are treated with suspicion or told to leave. Guests who have been approved by the tribal warlords are escorted by armed guards and must wear the traditional shalwar kameez, a long, loose-fitting shirt and baggy pants.

Last fall, several tribal leaders sent thousands of men into Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban and against the U.S.-led coalition.

Today, tribal support for al-Qaeda remains strong. Dozens of posters that feature a picture of bin Laden have been pasted to walls here. They read, in Urdu: ''It is the duty of all Muslims to wage a war on non-Muslims.'' They offer a $50,000 reward to anyone who captures a U.S. soldier and $30,000 for anyone who kills one. The posters replaced those put up by U.S. officials last fall offering a $25 million reward for bin Laden's capture.

''We have decided not to allow the American or Pakistani armies to enter our villages, desecrate our holy sites and look for Osama,'' says Maulana Mohammed, a local Islamic leader who says he fought for the Taliban in Afghanistan. He now solicits funds and weapons for al-Qaeda in the tribal areas. ''If they do, we will kill the Americans and capture the Pakistanis.''

U.S. and Pakistan military officials do not doubt that Mohammed means what he says.

The tribesmen also are protecting the al-Qaeda fighters. They tip off the fugitives to the movements of the U.S. forces and fire their guns and even beat drums to alert them when U.S. troops are in their villages. Other tribesmen say they are selling the U.S. forces false information on the whereabouts of the al-Qaeda fighters. CIA officials and U.S. Special Forces, who operate in Pakistan, regularly pay villagers for information on al-Qaeda's whereabouts.

''Every chance I get, I lie,'' says Idress, 72, a shepherd. Like many here, he has only one name. ''I see the American soldiers. They ask me, 'Where is al-Qaeda?' and I lie. We are all doing our part.''

The tribesmen brag that there's little chance the al-Qaeda fighters will be caught. They say the men have broken into small groups and move around on the 300 narrow, mountain paths that smugglers use to transport opium.

Once in Pakistan, the fighters follow escape routes to safe houses set up by al-Qaeda in 1998 after U.S. planes bombed their training camps in eastern Afghanistan. The bombings were in retaliation for al-Qaeda's attacks, weeks earlier, on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people, including 12 Americans.

Some of the safe houses have Internet connections via satellite phone to allow the al-Qaeda members to communicate, the villagers say. Nearly all of the houses have large caches of weapons, they add. U.S. officials say their forces raided a mountain cave here June 10. It was once used by al-Qaeda. They seized dozens of anti-aircraft shells, rocket launchers and other heavy weapons.

Since April, U.S. officials say, al-Qaeda operatives have fired rockets five times at a government building in the nearby city of Miram Shah, where some U.S. forces who are tracking al-Qaeda are based. So far, the officials say, there have been no injuries.

Several times a week, U.S. Special Forces and CIA operatives drive or are flown by helicopter from their base in Khost, Afghanistan, less than 30 miles away, to Pakistan's border, U.S. officials say. Escorted by Afghan guides, they cross into Pakistan and conduct all-night raids on suspected al-Qaeda hideouts, they add. The soldiers return to Afghanistan after the raids. Pakistan denies that U.S. soldiers are operating in their country. Idress, the shepherd, says Pakistani intelligence officials forced him to sign a statement saying the U.S. forces he saw here were on the Afghan side of the border.

The forces operate in eight-man teams and wear dark masks, night-vision goggles, bulletproof vests and camouflaged uniforms stripped of all insignia, the officials say. Often, the soldiers on reconnaissance missions are camouflaged as bushes in the fields, according to shepherds and children who have accidentally stumbled upon them.

''For more than two months, the U.S. commandos have been crossing (into Pakistan) arresting people and bringing them back to Afghanistan,'' says Jalal Khan, an Afghan commander who is assisting the Americans soldiers here. ''They have captured some commanders but mostly, they are getting foot soldiers -- and (accidentally) killing our foxes and jackals who they think are foot soldiers.''

As he speaks, an unmanned CIA Predator aircraft flies over the area to take reconnaissance photos. U.S. officials say spy satellites also are monitoring al-Qaeda movements and communication here.

Khan says there are hundreds of villages and thousands of mountain caves where al-Qaeda operatives could be hiding. He says U.S. soldiers don't know their way around the area and are too slow in getting to the mountain locations where they think al-Qaeda is hiding. They also lack reliable intelligence and good maps. He pulls out a Russian-made map of the area, dated 1979. His U.S. Special Forces contact, known only as ''Jim,'' gave it to him, he says.

Last week, Khan says, U.S. forces raided a home near here where they believed bin Laden's lieutenant, Zawahiri, had been hiding. They were acting on intelligence provided by villagers. The home was empty. Villagers said Zawahiri had left several hours earlier.

That same week, Afghan guides, working with the U.S. forces, trekked four days to a mountain cave where shepherds said a group of al-Qaeda fighters had been staying. By the time they got there, the house was empty except for food wrappers and water bottles. ''We are at a great disadvantage,'' says Mohammed Yacoub, another Afghan commander who works with the Americans. ''We're playing cat-and-mouse, and we're losing.''

More attacks planned

U.S. and Pakistani forces insist they are arresting al-Qaeda fighters and getting the cooperation of many tribesmen. Pakistani officials say they have detained nearly 400 suspected members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda since December. Of those, at least 300 have been turned over to U.S. authorities for questioning. They also say they have found documents in several al-Qaeda safe houses here that appear to suggest Western targets for future attacks in Pakistan, bank records showing large deposits in suspected al-Qaeda accounts in the United Arab Emirates, and e-mail addresses of suspected al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan, the Middle East and Europe.

''We are following the footprints of al-Qaeda men in rural, urban and tribal areas of Pakistan,'' says Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, director general of Pakistan's Interior Ministry. Other Pakistani officials say the country is losing its battle against al-Qaeda and other militant Muslim groups. They fear that al-Qaeda, working with another extremist group such as the one that detonated a car bomb outside the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, will soon attack more Western targets in Pakistan. They also worry that al-Qaeda and its related groups may try to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for his support of the U.S.-led war on terror.

At least one suspected al-Qaeda fighter agrees. Back at the Marhaba Salon, a 24-year-old Yemeni man, who had just crossed the Afghan border, is having his hair trimmed and his beard shaved. Bakhtiar, the barber, says he will be smuggled past checkpoints into an al-Qaeda safe house.

The man, who gives his name as Jabril Ahmed, denies he is an al-Qaeda or Taliban fighter, but he calls bin Laden ''a prophet.'' He says he went to Afghanistan last year to study the Koran. That's a cover story often used by al-Qaeda operatives, U.S. officials say.

''The world has not seen what Sheik bin Laden can do,'' Ahmed says. He then jumps from the barber's chair, points his finger and says, ''Our work has just begun.'' Cover storyCover story