[Mb-civic] How would the US react if someone did this to us??

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

To see this story with its related links on the The Observer site, go to
http://www.observer.co.uk

The drone, the CIA and a botched attempt to kill bin Laden's deputy
In the hunt for al-Qaeda, a missile attack on a mountain village killed
women and children. The attack was precise, the intelligence was flawed,
and the strained relation between Pakistan and the US has been pushed to
breaking point Jason Burke and Imtiaz Gul in Islamabad Sunday January 15
2006 The Observer


The missiles were deadly accurate. In the pitch dark of a night in
Pakistan's sparsely populated North West Frontier Province, they not only
located the three targeted houses on the outskirts of the village of
Damadola Burkanday but squarely struck their hujra, the large rooms
traditionally used by Pashtun tribesmen to accommodate guests.

Yesterday some of the results of the strike were very clear: three ruined
houses, mud-brick rubble scattered across the steeply terraced fields, the
bodies of livestock lying where thrown by the airblast, a row of newly dug
graves in the village cemetery and torn green and red embroidered blankets
flapping in the chilly wind. Four children were among the 18 villagers who
died in the brutally sudden attack on their homes.

Yet evidence emerging appeared to indicate that, though the technology
that guided the missiles to their targets at 3am on Friday was faultless,
the intelligence that had selected those targets was not. Even as American
military and intelligence sources spoke of the possible death of Ayman
al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command of al-Qaeda and the man considered to
be the brains behind the militant group's strategy, Pakistani officials
said that there was no evidence any 'foreigners', shorthand locally for
al-Qaeda fighters, were among the 18 victims, though they said that
'according to preliminary investigations there was foreign presence in the
area'.

In a bid to distance themselves from what was looking like a tragic and
counter-productive tactical error that had cost many innocent lives,
Pakistan announced it would file a formal protest with the Americans.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told a news conference that the
Pakistani government wanted 'to assure the people we will not allow such
incidents to recur,' adding that the government had no information about
al-Zawahiri.

'We deeply regret that civilian lives have been lost in an incident. While
this act is highly condemnable, we have been for a long time striving to
rid all our tribal areas of foreign intruders who have been responsible
for all the misery and violence in the region. This situation has to be
brought to an end,' he said.

But his words did little to calm the anger in and around Damadola, a
bastion of conservative religion and tribal chauvinism, and elsewhere in
Pakistan. The village lies in the semi-autonomous Bajur tribal region
around 120 miles northwest of Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. It is a
rugged and desperately poor region, until recently a centre of opium
cultivation, where local men habitually go armed and government authority
is limited to main roads. Thousands of local men marched in a series of
protests yesterday, one crowd attacking the office of a US-funded aid
group. In another incident, police were forced to fire tear gas to
disperse as many as 400 protesters chanting anti-American slogans and
waving banners condemning the Pakistan President, General Pervez
Musharraf.

Musharraf, who came to power in 1999, has maintained a difficult and
domestically unpopular alliance with Washington since 2001 and has
deployed unprecedented numbers of troops on bloody operations to capture
senior al-Qaeda figures. However, to the Americans' intense annoyance, he
has not granted US forces in Afghanistan the right to cross the border
into Pakistan, even in pursuit of militants. American-led coalition forces
clashing with militants in the mountainous province of Kunar, immediately
adjacent to Bajaur which lies a mere four miles from the frontier, say
they have often been frustrated by their enemies' use of Pakistan as a
sanctuary. Yesterday the Pakistani Foreign Ministry took pains to point
out that 'in all probability [the village] was targeted from across the
border in Afghanistan'.

Tensions between Washington and Islamabad have grown in recent weeks as
American troops have stepped up operations against militants. Pakistan has
already lodged a protest with the US military six days ago after a
reported US airstrike killed eight people in the North Waziristan tribal
region, an almost deserted area of mountains 300 miles south of Damadola.
In Damadola itself, locals said they had never sheltered any al-Qaeda or
Taliban leaders, let alone al-Zawahiri, an instantly recognisable
54-year-old Egyptian-born ex-doctor.

'This is a big lie... Only our family members died in the attack,' said
Shah Zaman, a jeweller who lost two sons and a daughter in the attack.
'They dropped bombs from planes and we were in no position to stop them...
or to tell them we are innocent. I don't know [al-Zawahiri]. He
was not at my home. No foreigner was at my home when the planes came and
dropped bombs.' Haroon Rashid, a member of parliament who lives in a
village near Damadola, told The Observer that he had seen a drone
surveying the area hours before the attack.

'A drone has been flying over the area for the last three, four days, and
I had a feeling that something nasty was going to happen,' he said in a
phone interview. 'There was no foreigner there - we never saw a single
foreigner here. They were all local people, jewellers and shop-keepers,
who used to commute between Bajaur and their village. We knew them.'

The dead were reported to include four children, aged between five and
ten, and at least two women. According to Islamic tradition, they were
buried almost immediately. One Pakistani official, speaking anonymously,
told The Observer that hours before the strike some unidentified guests
had arrived at one home and that some bodies had been removed quickly
after the attack. This was denied by villagers.

US and Pakistani officials have also said that the missiles were launched
from American pilotless predator drones, which have previously been used
to target senior al-Qaeda figures. A man alleged to be al-Qaeda's
third-in-command was killed in a 'stand-off' missile attack around a month
ago. However, several eyewitnesses spoke of seeing planes and illuminating
flares over the village, which if true would indicate the use of missiles
from planes guided in by special forces teams on the ground rather than
CIA-operated drones.

Obaidullah, a local doctor, said he saw the airstrike from his home about
five to six kilometres away. 'There was one plane flying (overhead). Then
more planes came. First they dropped light and then bombs,' he said. If US
troops have crossed the frontier from Afghanistan in pursuit of militants,
it would be a major diplomatic incident and a domestic disaster for
Musharraf.

The Americans have become increasingly frustrated by their inability to
catch al-Zawahiri, whom analysts see as the strategic mentor of Osama bin
Laden. Al-Zawahiri was already a hardened Egyptian militant when he joined
bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian six years younger, in the late 1980s to form
the al-Qaeda group out of the remnants of Arab 'mujahideen' who had fought
the Russians in Afghanistan. After masterminding a series of attacks,
culminating in the 11 September atrocities, from camps in Afghanistan in
the late 1990s, al-Zawahiri has been on the run. However, this has not
stopped him providing broad strategic direction for the international
Islamic militant movement and, through appearing in frequent propaganda
videos, becoming almost as well known as bin Laden himself. Despite a huge
manhunt and a $25m reward, he has escaped capture. Strong local sympathy
for al-Qaeda fugitives in the harsh hills that line the Afghan frontier
with Pakistan has been a major advantage.

'The Americans are really not much closer to finding him than they were
years ago,' said one intelligence analyst. 'They are hunting in an area
that is about a thousand miles long and two hundred miles wide. That is a
tough job by anyone's standards.' The carnage at Damadola indicates that
the hunted is still a step ahead of the hunters.

 The Al-Zawahiri file

· Born 1951, Cairo. Son of a chemistry professor. A trained
paediatrician.

· Travelled to Pakistan in 1985 after being arrested, imprisoned and
tortured in sweep of militants following killing of President Sadat.

· Spent 1991-1996 in Sudan with Osama bin Laden before moving to
Afghanistan.

· A key theorist of modern Islamic militancy, he developed strategy
of using spectacular violence against American interests to 'wake up the
masses'.

· From series of mountain hideouts along Pakistan -Afghanistan
frontier he has issued videos and communiqués aimed at inspiring
militants

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited


------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 09:12:42 -0500
From: William Swiggard <swiggard at comcast.net>
Subject: [Mb-civic] U.S. Strike On Al Qaeda Top Deputy Said to Fail -
 Washington Post
To: mb-civic <mb-civic at islandlists.com>
Message-ID: <43CA585A.3070502 at comcast.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

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/AR20060114
00961.html?nav=hcmodule 


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