Al Qaeda can revive at Afghanistan-Pakistan border: CIA

Al Qaeda can regenerate in border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan while the Islamic State (ISIS) is emerging as a competitor to some of the existing terror groups in the war-torn country, the CIA has warned. The warning came as the Pakistani military arrested 97 Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi terrorists, who were involved in major attacks in the country, and foiled a jail break attempt to free US journalist Daniel Pearl’s murderer, the Army said on Friday.

The law-enforcing agencies successfully busted a nexus of AQIS and LeJ terrorists, the military said.

Security forces achieved a major success during the ongoing Karachi operation by arresting over 97 hardcore terrorists, including three high-value targets, chief military spokesman Lt. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa said. “We have broken the overall network and nexus of terrorists belonging to Al Qaeda Subcontinent chapter and LeJ. They were backed by Tehreek-e-Taliban. This is a major achievement, but we have much more to do,” Gen. Bajwa said at a press conference in Karachi.

He said the terrorists were involved in almost all major incidents of terrorism in Karachi, adding that all of them are in military custody.

“They committed several heinous crimes, including attacks on security forces, Kamra airbase attack, Mehran airbase attack in Karachi, suicide attack on senior police officer Chaudhry Aslam, attacks on naval buses in Karachi and other incidents of terrorism,” he said.

About the three high value targets, he said they are three hardcore terrorists — Masna, the “number two” of AQIS, Naeem Bukhari, the head of LeJ’s Sindh chapter, and Munna, a wanted terrorist of Al Qaeda. LeJ is an Islamist group whose sectarian ideology is closely aligned with Islamic State (ISIS), as it wants to kill or expel Pakistan’s minority Shias and establish a Sunni theocracy. AQIS was formed by global Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in September 2014, and is one of dozens of Islamist militant groups, some aligned against Pakistan and others against its neighbours, that operate in the country.

Gen. Bajwa said the Army foiled a plot of Hyderabad jailbreak by arresting perpetrators from the city, seizing their arms and ammunition.

“Several of those arrested, including Bokhari, were in the advanced stages of carrying out car bomb attack on Hyderabad Central Jail to free Ahmed Omar Sheikh (who kidnapped and killed the Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Pearl in 2002),” he said.

On the other hand, the CIA again raised alarm that a resurgent Qaeda colluding with other militants groups at AfPak border poses a grave security threat for the region.

“We’re concerned that Al Qaeda can regenerate in that Afghan-Pak border region, which is why we need to maintain the intelligence collection as well as working with our Afghan and Pak partners,” CIA director John Brennan told members of the Senate select committee on Intelligence early this week. There are about 100 or so Al Qaeda members in the eastern parts of Afghanistan. The Al Qaeda leaders there have joined hands with some of the other militant organisations in the area, including the Taliban, he said.

“So they continue to apply their trade on the ground inside Afghanistan,” Mr Brennan said. Mr Brennan said the ISIS has been able to take advantage of some elements within the Taliban that have been disenchanted with the organisation.

“So ISIL is seen as a threat certainly by Afghan officials when I’ve travelled over to Afghanistan just two months ago. One of the real concerns they had that ISIL is planting the flag in different parts of Afghanistan.”

“ISIL probably has several hundred members or so inside Afghanistan, I would estimate. And it is distributed. They have had some setbacks there as they have gone up against some of the other militant organisations. But it is a concern,” he said.

“Just like we see these various franchises growing in places like Indonesia or Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, we see the same thing in South Asia,” he added.