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US receiving reliable intelligence concerning Qaeda in Tribal Areas

* Official says US does not view Taliban as bigger threat than Al Qaeda

By Iqbal Khattak

PESHAWAR: The United States is getting ‘good actionable intelligence’ on Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas but not the Taliban, a senior official co-ordinating with Washington in the war on terror told Daily Times on Saturday.

“The US has good intelligence on Al Qaeda members in our Tribal Areas, and Washington also appears more interested in Qaeda than Taliban,” the senior official said, asking not to be named.

The killing of Abu Khabab al-Masri, head of Al Qaeda’s weapons of mass destruction programme, in the first week of August in South Waziristan speaks volume for the good intelligence the US is getting.

Since early this year, the US has carried out around a dozen strikes through unmanned spy planes in Bajaur and the Waziristan agencies. Washington suspects Al Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri might be hiding in Bajaur.

The official did not say whether Pakistani intelligence agencies were behind the reliable information or if the US itself was using “own human intelligence on ground” or electronic equipment to track down the terror network.

In the last eight months, the US has eliminated some key Al Qaeda operatives, including Abu Sulayman Jazairi, an Algerian operative who directed Al Qaeda’s external operations, and Abu Laith al-Libbi, during drone-led strikes in the Tribal Areas. “I think the tribal people are also willing to pass on actionable intelligence on foreign elements of Al Qaeda,” said a tribal elder in Azam Warsak, South Waziristan. “The same level of success is, however, not coming as far as the Taliban are concerned,” the official said.

Bigger threat: He added that the US did not view the Taliban as a bigger threat than Al Qaeda. “Washington is only looking for Al Qaeda operatives and it does not like to fire expensive Hellfire missiles on other than Arab elements of Qaeda.” Except for one case when the US drone killed Taliban leader Nek Muhammad in South Waziristan in June 2004, there has been no other instance to suggest how important the killing of Taliban leaders is to Washington.

“If Washington takes out the Al Qaeda threat completely and the terror group no longer poses any security danger to the mainland of America, the US may open channels with Taliban leaders in Afghanistan to find peaceful solution to the Afghan problem,” the official went on to add.

Earlier, NWFP Governor Owais Ahmed Ghani had said, “political stability will only come to Afghanistan when all political power groups, irrespective of the length of their beard, are given their just and due share in the political dispensation in Afghanistan.

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