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Thursday March 28, 2024

Arrests since 9/11 show al-Qaeda maintaining presence in Karachi: report

By Zia Ur Rehman
October 03, 2017

The statistics compiled about the arrest of suspects affiliated with al-Qaeda in Karachi since the 9/11 attacks in the United States suggest that the global jihadi outfit has been able to maintain its presence in the metropolis. Although the number of high-profile al-Qaeda members arrested in Karachi dropped after the first few years following 9/11, the number of the militant outfit’s arrest actions in Karachi – as well as the al-Qaeda individuals arrested there – has picked up since the group formally created al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) in September 2014.

This was the crux of a research report titled ‘al-Qaeda in Pakistan: A metric problem?’, published in a special edition of the CTC Sentinel, a publication of the US military academic institution, analysing al-Qaeda in past 16 years since 9/11.

Reviewing the statistics containing information on 102 al-Qaeda arrest actions taken between September 12, 2001, and May 31, 2017 in Karachi, the report said 300 suspects associated with the global militant outfit had been arrested in various parts of the city during the period. Also, over that period of time, Pakistani law enforcement and security forces conducted more than five al-Qaeda arrest actions in Karachi every year on average. This roughly equated to Pakistani security forces engaging in at least one, publicly identifiable, al-Qaeda arrest action in Karachi every other month on average for a 15-year period, the report added.

The report also noted a concerning trend – a rise in incidents and the number of al-Qaeda operatives arrested between 2013 and 2016 in Karachi -- and it was mainly because of the formation of AQIS in September 2014. “The number of arrest actions and the number of al-Qaeda suspects arrested in Karachi from 2015 to 2016 nearly tripled and increased almost six-fold, respectively. Put another way, since the creation of AQIS until the end of 2016, there have been 24 arrest actions resulting in the arrest of 88 individuals.”

Breaking down the al-Qaeda arrests at district level, the report ranked Malir and East with the highest number of arrest actions (19 incidents, 26.7 per cent of the total) for each
district, followed by Central (nine incidents, 12.7 per cent), West (six incidents, 8.5 per cent), South (six incidents, 8.5 per cent), Korangi and Cantonment areas (four incidents each, with each representing 5.6 percent of the total).

Malir police on September 28 claimed to have killed five suspects, who were apparently planning to attack a Muharram procession by using a remote-controlled vehicle, in an alleged shootout off the Super Highway. One among the killed was an AQIS member, police claimed.

Measured as a percentage of all al-Qaeda arrest actions across all districts in Karachi, the neighborhood of Gulshan-e-Iqbal in the East district, accounted for 11.5 per cent. Another interesting takeaway from the data is that three of the four cantonments’ arrest actions took place in territory managed by the Defense Housing Authority, the report stated.

Discussing the various factors making Karachi an attractive location for al-Qaeda to operate in, it said the country’s financial and commercial hub as well as its size and the diversity found in it attracted global jihadi groups, such as al-Qaeda.