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| No al-Qaeda or Taliban leader was killed in recent US strikes |
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Monday, September 15, 2008
By Hamid Mir
MIRAMSHAH: No prominent Taliban or al-Qaeda leader has been killed in recent US air strikes in the Pakistani tribal areas, a visit to the area has revealed.
All the injured victims of the US air strikes admitted in hospitals in Miramshah and Bannu are women or children. Four Arabs killed in the Dande Darpakhel area close to Miramshah last week were not associated with al-Qaeda. One of them, Abu Harris, has been living in North Waziristan since 1987.
Some media outfits had claimed that Abu Harris was the al-Qaeda chief in Pakistan but the local Taliban in Dande Darpakhel area told this scribe that Abu Harris was an old friend of Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, who has not been an active militant for the last 20 years.
Family sources of Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani claimed in Dande Darpakhel that Abu Harris was a Jordanian of Palestinian origin. He came to Pakistan in the early ‘80s to fight against Soviet troops in Afghanistan. He participated in the great battle of Khost in 1987 along with Haqqani. He never joined al-Qaeda, which was created in 1988 in Peshawar immediately after the death of General Ziaul Haq in a plane crash.
Abu Harris tried to go back to Jordan in 1989 but was unable to as he was wanted by the Jordanian authorities due to his links with some anti-government clerics. He moved to Dubai for some time but finally he settled down in Miramshah, where Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani was also living with his family.
Abu Harris was married to a local woman. He moved to Khost in 1995 but came back to North Waziristan after 9/11. He was living in a home next to the Madrassa of Haqqani for many years. The local administration of North Waziristan was aware that Abu Harris was an Afghan Jihad veteran and currently was not associated with militancy in Afghanistan.
During a long journey from Kohat to Miramshah, this scribe noticed that many areas in the south of the NWFP as well as in the tribal belt are no more under the full control of the government. These areas are managed by different militant groups, who have no central command structure. The security forces control only some major roads but have very little control over the villages or small towns in the area.
Meanwhile, a large number of local youngsters are getting frustrated and are joining different militant groups to continue their Jihad. There are three major militant groups in North Waziristan who often refuse to accept the authority of each other.
Miramshah is controlled by Utmanzai Wazir militants while the Mir Ali area is controlled by Dawar militants. Some Uzbek militants are living in the forests of Shawal area but US planes have never targeted them. Local militants accept Baitullah Mehsud as their Ameer, but now they are not in touch with him on a regular basis and make their own policies and decisions.
This scribe recorded many interviews in the Dande Darpakhel area on camera with the permission of the local Taliban. A militant group stopped and detained this scribe for many hours near Bannu and snatched the camera on our way back to Bannu. When I asked them to speak to the Taliban leaders in Miramshah, they said that they had no links with them.
These militants said that the Miramshah Taliban were controlled by Qari Gul Bahadur, who was loyal to Baitullah Mehsud but they were loyal to Commander Umar Khalid alias Abdul Wali, who runs a big training camp in Mohmand Agency.
They claimed that Qari Gul Bahadar was pro-Pakistan but they were no hypocrites. When I asked them why the US planes are not targeting Umar Khalid in Mohmand, they just laughed and cautioned that I should not dare come to Bannu again because they will soon “liberate” the area.
It is learnt that Umar Khalid is a new commander, who is hiring only those boys in Fata whose families suffered during the recent operations.
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briefs...
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ISSN 1563-9479 
