[Mb-civic] U.S. Strike On Al Qaeda Top Deputy Said to Fail - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

U.S. Strike On Al Qaeda Top Deputy Said to Fail
Thousands Protest After Attack In Pakistan Leaves 17 Dead

By Griff Witte and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 15, 2006; A01

KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 14 -- Pakistani officials said Saturday that a 
U.S. missile strike intended to kill al Qaeda deputy Ayman Zawahiri had 
missed its target but had killed 17 people, including six women and six 
children.

Tens of thousands of Pakistanis staged an angry anti-American protest 
near the remote village of Damadola, about 120 miles northwest of 
Islamabad, where Friday's attack took place. According to witnesses, the 
demonstrators shouted, "Death to America!" and "Death to Musharraf!" -- 
referring to Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf -- and the 
offices of at least one U.S.-backed aid organization were ransacked and 
set ablaze.

In Washington, U.S. intelligence sources said it was too early to know 
whether the strike had killed Zawahiri, 54, an Egyptian physician who is 
al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's top aide. "The outcome of this doesn't 
seem decided," said a source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

U.S. officials defended the strike, saying it was the right course of 
action based on timely intelligence about Zawahiri's whereabouts early 
Friday. Zawahiri had been under surveillance by the CIA for two weeks, 
security sources said.

The CIA, which military and intelligence sources say carried out the 
attack with a type of unmanned aircraft called a Predator, declined to 
comment Saturday.

Local authorities denied that any foreigners had been present in the area.

"We can say with full authority that those who were killed were all 
innocent permanent residents of the village Damadola," said Sirajul Haq, 
senior minister of Pakistan's North-West Frontier province. "Any 
independent probe would confirm that no foreigner was in the vicinity of 
the neighborhood targeted by the U.S. missiles."

Two officials with Pakistan's military intelligence service confirmed 
the local leaders' assessment. The Pakistani government in Islamabad, 
however, produced a more muted response, saying it had formally 
protested the strike to the U.S. government but conceding there may have 
been people in the area whom the United States would have an interest in 
attacking.

The strike was the latest in a series aimed at al Qaeda fugitives 
believed to be hiding in the region along Pakistan's porous and largely 
lawless border with Afghanistan.

After al Qaeda carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New 
York and the Pentagon, U.S. forces and Afghan militias toppled the 
Afghan Taliban movement, which had sheltered and supported bin Laden's 
organization. Bin Laden, Zawahiri and many other al Qaeda leaders are 
believed to have crossed the border and taken refuge in Pakistan's 
tribal regions, where they have eluded capture.

At the same time, Pakistani security services have apprehended several 
key al Qaeda operatives in the country's teeming cities. Khalid Sheik 
Mohammed, reputed to have planned many of the organization's terrorist 
attacks, including those on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was 
captured in Rawalpindi in March 2003. The previous September, the 
reputed coordinator of the Sept. 11 attacks, Ramzi Binalshibh, was 
captured in the port city of Karachi.

Zawahiri, who is considered by many to be al Qaeda's principal 
strategist, has released several videotapes in which he has urged 
Muslims worldwide to join a holy war against the United States. In a 
video released Jan. 6, he suggested President Bush's decision to reduce 
U.S. troop strength there constituted a victory for al Qaeda in Iraq.

U.S. and Pakistani authorities have said they have come close to killing 
Zawahiri in the past. In early 2004, Pakistani security forces believed 
they had him surrounded in the tribal areas, only to discover he had 
slipped away. On Saturday, al-Arabiya television reported that Zawahiri 
was alive, citing a source it said had been in contact with al Qaeda. 
"Reports of his death are wishful thinking," the network quoted unnamed 
sources as saying.

Residents of the largely autonomous tribal areas have frequently 
resisted efforts to capture or kill al Qaeda fugitives and have 
denounced the Bush and Musharraf administrations over attacks in the 
region. Friday's missile strike seemed to have fanned such sentiment.

"We want a swift government response to this aggression," said Zarwali 
Rahbar, a tribal elder who spoke at the rally near Damadola. "General 
Musharraf should protect us and not the U.S. interests in Pakistan."

U.S. military sources said Pakistan's intelligence service had been 
heavily involved in the attack. Senior Pakistani officials would not 
confirm involvement in the strike but acknowledged regular intelligence 
cooperation with the United States.

"The intelligence sharing is on an almost daily basis," said a senior 
Pakistani intelligence official, who said the cooperation included 
sharing of both human and electronic intelligence sources.

Late Saturday, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said in a statement that 
it had lodged a formal protest over the incident with the United States, 
but it left open the possibility that outsiders were operating in the 
vicinity of the strike.

"According to preliminary investigations, there was foreign presence in 
the area and that in all probability was targeted from across the border 
in Afghanistan," the statement said. "The investigations are still 
continuing. Meanwhile the Foreign Office has lodged a protest with the 
U.S. ambassador in Islamabad."

In Washington, the State Department said it had not received a formal 
protest.

A protest by Pakistan would be its second in less than a week, the first 
having come after a missile struck a village in the North Waziristan 
tribal region close to the Afghan border. That attack killed eight 
people, and local officials said terrorist suspects were not among them.

In December, a senior al Qaeda leader, Hamza Rabia, was believed to have 
been killed in a CIA-led strike in Pakistan along the Afghan border.

Musharraf did not address the attack directly Saturday. But while 
speaking at a public rally in the town of Sawabi, a hotbed of Islamic 
radicalism in North-West Frontier province, he asked people not to let 
suspected militants hide in their neighborhoods. "The consequences will 
be severe," he said.

Human rights organizations in Pakistan were vocal in condemning the 
attack, which they said undermined the cause of democracy in a country 
whose president came to power in a military coup in 1999.

"When the U.S. and other Western powers commit such a gross violation of 
human rights, it further weakens our position to highlight the human 
rights violations of Pakistan's military ruler in the world," said 
Afrasiab Khattak, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/14/AR2006011400961.html?nav=hcmodule
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