KARACHI - He was once close to Osama bin Laden, has intimate knowledge of al-Qaeda's logistics and financing and its nexus with the military in Pakistan, yet US intelligence has not been able to get its hands on him. Ghulam Mustafa, 38, was picked up about 10 days ago in Lahore, and no charges have been brought against him: he is expected to disappear into a "black hole" and quietly be forgotten. This is because Mustafa, erstwhile head of al-Qaeda's Pakistani operations, has some tales to tell, but the authorities in Pakistan would rather they were not heard, especially by the Americans, even though Islamabad is a signed-up member in the "war on terror". Mustafa's rise and fall provide a case study of the complexities within Pakistan and of the powerful forces that make the country's intelligence and military such unpredictable allies of the United States.
The making of a jihadi
Mustafa comes from the Punjab, where he was once the leader of the Jamaat-i-Islami (Punjab), Pakistan's most prominent Islamic party. In the 1980s, believing that the party's ideology was being diluted by election politics, he went to Afghanistan to join the mujahideen in the fight against the occupying Soviet forces. His educated background and clarity of thought on ideological matters soon drew him into the camp of the Arab fighters in the country, and it was not long before he entered bin Laden's inner circle.
