ID :
54957
Sun, 04/12/2009 - 01:25
Auther :
Shortlink :
https://www.oananews.org//node/54957
The shortlink copeid
Mehsud has links with ISI: report
New York, Apr 11 (PTI) Baitullah Mehsud, the chief of
Pakistani Taliban, who claimed credit for the recent deadly
attack on a police academy near Lahore, has links with the
country's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), a media report
said.
Based in lawless border between Pakistan and
Afghanistan, Mehsud was tipped off by ISI, to enable him
escape attempts to capture or kill him in the last two years,
Newsweek reported.
Several operations were launched by Pakistani security
forces in the last couple of years to kill or capture Mehsud,
who is also suspected to have hand in the assassination of
former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the news magazine noted.
But each time he vanished without incident.
He heads a group known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban and has
made a name for himself since late 2007 as one of the
militants' most ambitious leaders, Newsweek said.
Two counter-terrorism expert familiar with official US
government's reporting told the magazine that officials in
both Washington and Islamabad suspect Mehsud has contacts
inside the ISI, Pakistan's "inscrutable and sprawling
intelligence agency".
Mehsud's contacts, the theory goes, are tipping him off
before Pakistani troops can pounce, Newsweek said.
The report quoted a Pakistani source, who follows the
issue, as saying that high-level American officials have
shared with their counterparts in Islamabad some intelligence,
indicating that renegade ISI elements helped Mehsud's group
train for the December 2007 assassination of Pakistan's former
prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
US officials, it said, either declined to discuss that
point or said they couldn't confirm it.
Given Mehsud's "odious reputation" and Pakistan's
"purported knowledge" of his whereabouts, "it's a puzzle why
they're ignoring and avoiding any strike against him," one
tribal elder in the region told Newsweek.
"Baitullah is very much mixed up in Afghanistan and with
Al Qaeda," one Afghan Taliban commander told the news
magazine, adding that Mehsud was capable of shipping foreign
fighters into Afghanistan "and even [farther] west".
Several US officials consider such threats to be mere
chest-thumping, but they don't rule out the possibility that
Mehsud could be cooperating with better-equipped jihadists,
such as the remnants of Qaeda's high command, the report said.
Frances Townsend, a top counter-terrorism adviser to
former president George W Bush, notes that Mehsud has already
demonstrated his ability to mount attacks inside Pakistani
cities, well beyond his base of operations.
"You have got to be careful about dismissing [his
more expansive threats] out of hand," Townsend warned. PTI DS
SAK
NNNN
Pakistani Taliban, who claimed credit for the recent deadly
attack on a police academy near Lahore, has links with the
country's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), a media report
said.
Based in lawless border between Pakistan and
Afghanistan, Mehsud was tipped off by ISI, to enable him
escape attempts to capture or kill him in the last two years,
Newsweek reported.
Several operations were launched by Pakistani security
forces in the last couple of years to kill or capture Mehsud,
who is also suspected to have hand in the assassination of
former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the news magazine noted.
But each time he vanished without incident.
He heads a group known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban and has
made a name for himself since late 2007 as one of the
militants' most ambitious leaders, Newsweek said.
Two counter-terrorism expert familiar with official US
government's reporting told the magazine that officials in
both Washington and Islamabad suspect Mehsud has contacts
inside the ISI, Pakistan's "inscrutable and sprawling
intelligence agency".
Mehsud's contacts, the theory goes, are tipping him off
before Pakistani troops can pounce, Newsweek said.
The report quoted a Pakistani source, who follows the
issue, as saying that high-level American officials have
shared with their counterparts in Islamabad some intelligence,
indicating that renegade ISI elements helped Mehsud's group
train for the December 2007 assassination of Pakistan's former
prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
US officials, it said, either declined to discuss that
point or said they couldn't confirm it.
Given Mehsud's "odious reputation" and Pakistan's
"purported knowledge" of his whereabouts, "it's a puzzle why
they're ignoring and avoiding any strike against him," one
tribal elder in the region told Newsweek.
"Baitullah is very much mixed up in Afghanistan and with
Al Qaeda," one Afghan Taliban commander told the news
magazine, adding that Mehsud was capable of shipping foreign
fighters into Afghanistan "and even [farther] west".
Several US officials consider such threats to be mere
chest-thumping, but they don't rule out the possibility that
Mehsud could be cooperating with better-equipped jihadists,
such as the remnants of Qaeda's high command, the report said.
Frances Townsend, a top counter-terrorism adviser to
former president George W Bush, notes that Mehsud has already
demonstrated his ability to mount attacks inside Pakistani
cities, well beyond his base of operations.
"You have got to be careful about dismissing [his
more expansive threats] out of hand," Townsend warned. PTI DS
SAK
NNNN
