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| India-Pakistan |
| Release of Qari Saifullah Akhtar stirs questions |
| 2011-01-10 |
| [Pak Daily Times] He is a self-declared warrior against US and NATO troops in Afghanistan. He allegedly ran terrorist training camps there when the Taliban was in power. He was suspected of involvement in the attempted liquidation of two Pak leaders. And today, Qari Saifullah Akhtar is free. Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah said he was released from four months of house arrest in early December because authorities finished questioning him in connection with the October 2007 attempted liquidation of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and found no grounds to charge him. Benazir was killed in December the same year. However, The infamous However... one US official said Akhtar had extensive ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups and is someone who should not be free to walk around the streets of Pakistain or any other country. Former US intelligence officials and analysts said Akhtar's release was yet another sign of Pakistain's reluctance or inability to crack down on the most dangerous terrorist organisations. The leader of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hafiz Saeed, was freed from custody on more than one occasion and is currently free. LeT, headquartered in Punjab, is believed to be the criminal mastermind behind the November 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people. As part of Pakistain's battle with India, the military and intelligence helped train and arm Death Eater groups who fought in the disputed Kashmire region. Many of those groups cut their teeth on guerrilla warfare in the US-backed 1980s bad boy war against Russian soldiers in Afghanistan. But military and intelligence officials have said their relationship with such groups was severed after the September 11, 2001 attacks, which marked a turning point that moved Pakistain into a closer alliance with the US. However there are lingering concerns that some links with cut-throats remain. Pak military officials say the military and intelligence services fighting faceless myrmidons in the northwestern tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan are stretched too thin to open another front against cut-throats in the Punjab. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to talk to the media. A number of Death Eater groups active within Pakistain are headquartered in Punjab, where 60 percent of the country's 170 million people live. Military officials said that gathering actionable intelligence in the tribal regions, where some al Qaeda's leaders are believed to be hiding, has been deadly. A senior intelligence official said Pakistain had lost more than 50 spies killed by Death Eaters. "I think it is clear that Akhtar is going to go back to the front lines of the fight against the US, which complicates our mission in Afghanistan, and threatens the stability and security of the region in general," says Charles Bacon, a US-based intelligence analyst. Pak and US analysts say Akhtar's release reflects a growing lack of control by the country's security agencies over one-time prodigies who have broken away and turned their weapons on the state. Muhammed Amir Rana, who runs the Pakistain Institute for Peace Studies, said freeing Akhtar was a desperate attempt by the security agencies to reunite Death Eater groups whose members have splintered into smaller groups and in some cases, turned against Pakistain because of its support for the US-led war in Afghanistan and its attacks on the Taliban at home. |
| Posted by:Fred |