Ever since the Lal Masjid operation, President Pervez Musharraf has had to face retaliatory action from militant factions all over Pakistan, who are backed and continuously urged by the Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri, Newsweek magazine said. While Osama bin Laden has been keeping a low profile - he may be ill, US intelligence officials say - Zawahiri has moved aggressively to take operational control of the group. In so doing, Zawahiri has provoked a potentially serious ideological split within Al Qaeda over whether he is growing too powerful, and has become obsessed with toppling Musharraf, according to two jihadists interviewed by the magazine last week.
After years in which Zawahiri seemed constantly on the run, his alleged orchestration of last weekÂ’s attacks would be further evidence that Qaeda and Taliban forces are newly empowered and have consolidated control of a safe haven along the Pakistani border.
A new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) out of Washington last week also concludes that Al Qaeda is resurgent in Pakistan - and more centrally organised than it has been at any time since 9/11.
The anti-Zawahiri faction in Al Qaeda fears his actions may be jeopardising the safe haven they have reportedly established within the lawless tribal northwest of Pakistan, according to the two jihadists. They are Omar Farooqi, the nom de guerre for a veteran Taliban fighter and chief liaison officer between insurgent forces in AfghanistanÂ’s Ghazni province, and Hemat Khan, a Taliban operative with links to Al Qaeda.
They say ZawahiriÂ’s personal jihad has angered Al QaedaÂ’s so-called Libyan faction, which intelligence officials believe may be led by Abu Yahya al-Libi, who made a daring escape from an American high-security lockup at Baghram air base in 2005. The Libyan Islamists, along with bin Laden and other senior Al Qaeda leaders, would love to see Musharraf gone, too. But they fear that Zawahiri is inviting the Pakistani leaderÂ’s wrath, prematurely opening up another battlefront before the jihadists have properly consolidated their position.
Pakistani intelligence officials believe Zawahiri was behind two attempts to kill Musharraf that failed in December 2003. Since then, Zawahiri has been on an almost personal crusade to assassinate or overthrow the Pakistani leader. In his latest video, Zawahiri condemned the Lal Masjid raid and urged Pakistani Muslims to “revolt”, or else “Musharraf will annihilate you”.
Both jihadist sources who spoke to Newsweek say there is now what Khan calls “a clear divide” between the Zawahiri-controlled Egyptian and Yayha-controlled Libyan faction. In part, the Libyans seem to be irked by Zawahiri’s unchecked ego and self-righteousness. “The Libyans say he’s too extremist,” says Farooqi, and they resent Zawahiri for appearing to speak for bin Laden. “Libyans tell me that [bin Laden] has not appointed a successor and that only the US government and the international media talk of Zawahiri as being the deputy,” Farooqi says.
A senior US official involved in counter-terrorism policy, speaking on condition of anonymity, agrees that there are tensions between the two factions, as well as between Saudi and Central Asian elements. “These guys are not immune to nationalist tendencies,” he says.
John Arquilla, an intelligence expert at the Naval Postgraduate School who closely follows radical Islamist traffic, calls it “the battle for Al Qaeda’s strategic soul. There is a profound strategic debate over whether to focus on overturning the government in Pakistan because that puts them in control of a nuclear capacity.”
Bin Laden himself has not personally intervened to end the internal feud, according to the jihadist sources. Instead, bin Laden has tried to resolve the dispute by dividing duties between the two factions and appointing a pair of mediators, these sources say.
The infighting also hasnÂ’t prevented Zawahiri and his Qaeda brethren, along with Afghan Taliban and militant Pakistani tribal leaders, from establishing a complex command, control, training and recruitment base largely in Waziristan, according to US and Pakistani officials. US officials say Al Qaeda has vastly improved its position there since Musharraf signed a controversial peace deal with North WaziristanÂ’s Pashtun tribal elders in September 2006, which gave pro-Taliban tribal militants full control of security in the area. Al Qaeda provides funding, training and ideological inspiration, while Afghan Taliban and Pakistani tribal leaders supply the manpower: both fighters and the growing ranks of suicide bombers.
Last week tribal officials, who have become increasingly radicalised, indicated the deal was off. The governor of AfghanistanÂ’s Khowst province, Arsala Jamal, told Newsweek that Qaeda and Afghan and Pakistani militants had moved some of their top fighters and commanders from Waziristan into safe areas in Afghanistan in case Pakistani and US forces launched retaliatory raids.
US counter-terrorism operatives have been reluctant to cross into Waziristan for fear of violating Pakistani sovereignty and upsetting Musharraf.
But Hank Crumpton, a longtime Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) senior official and former counter-terrorism coordinator for the State Department, says US reluctance must be overcome because Musharraf cannot deal with the problem alone. The Pakistani leader sent more than 100,000 troops to the tribal areas last year, but “they lacked the requisite counterinsurgency skills,” Crumpton says. And if Musharraf does not confront the situation more squarely, he’ll face a growing Taliban movement in Pakistan, he said.