Eclipsed from the headlines by the ongoing carnage, there is an active
civil resistance in Iraq that opposes the occupation, the torture regime
it protects, and the jihadi and Ba'athist 'resistance' alike.
Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Fri, 12/28/2007 - 01:58.
Asia Times Dec. 29 is seemingly first to report al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility (bracketed interjections in original):
KARACHI - "We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat mujahideen." These were the words of al-Qaeda's top commander for Afghanistan operations and spokesperson Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, immediately after the attack that claimed the life of Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto on Thursday (December 27)...
"This is our first major victory against those [eg, Bhutto and President Pervez Musharraf] who have been siding with infidels [the West] in a fight against al-Qaeda and declared a war against mujahideen," Mustafa told Asia Times Online by telephone.
He said the death squad consisted of Punjabi associates of the underground anti-Shi’ite militant group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, operating under al-Qaeda orders.
We noted in June 2002 that Lashkar-i-Jhangvi was one of three groups targeted in Musharraf's post-9-11 crackdown, along with Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Muhammad. The latter two were most active in the Kashmir resistance—with Jaish-i-Muhhamad also named in the slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and the 2001 attack on the New Delhi parliament building. Lashkar-i-Jhangvi was largely accused in attacks on Shi'ites. Lashkar-i-Taiba seems the most active lately, implicated in the 2006 Mumbai bombings, and attacks on Sufis in Kashmir. The three groups were said to have merged as Lashkar-i-Omar—named for Ahmed Omar Sheikh, the Jaish-i-Muhammad leader accused of masterminding the Pearl murder.
Asia Times paints a grim picture:
The assassination of Bhutto was apparently only one of the goals of a large al-Qaeda plot, the existence of which was revealed earlier this month.
On December 6, a Pakistani intelligence agency tracked a cell phone conversation between a militant leader and a local cleric, in which a certain Maulana Asadullah Khalidi was named. The same day, Khalidi was arrested during a raid in Karachi. The arrest, in turn, led to the arrest of a very high-profile non-Pakistani militant leader, which, it is said, revealed an operation aimed at wiping out "precious American assets" in Pakistan, including Musharraf and Bhutto.
The operation is said to have involved hundreds of cells all over Pakistan to track targets and communicate with their command, which would then send out death squads.
Mustafa referred to a recent address by Bhutto in North West Frontier Province, in which she lambasted Islamic extremism and asked the people to stand against it. Bhutto was the only Pakistani leader who regularly spoke against al-Qaeda.
The inconvenient facts and unanswered questions surrounding the attacks are legion, but the endemic sloppiness of the self-styled "researchers" is delegitimizing the entire project of critiquing the "official version." The ostentatiously named "Truth movement" is not clearing the air, but muddying the water.
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Al-Qaeda claims Bhutto killing?
Asia Times Dec. 29 is seemingly first to report al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility (bracketed interjections in original):
We noted in June 2002 that Lashkar-i-Jhangvi was one of three groups targeted in Musharraf's post-9-11 crackdown, along with Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Muhammad. The latter two were most active in the Kashmir resistance—with Jaish-i-Muhhamad also named in the slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and the 2001 attack on the New Delhi parliament building. Lashkar-i-Jhangvi was largely accused in attacks on Shi'ites. Lashkar-i-Taiba seems the most active lately, implicated in the 2006 Mumbai bombings, and attacks on Sufis in Kashmir. The three groups were said to have merged as Lashkar-i-Omar—named for Ahmed Omar Sheikh, the Jaish-i-Muhammad leader accused of masterminding the Pearl murder.
Asia Times paints a grim picture:
See our last post on al-Qaeda.