Syed Shahzad's informative but flawed final work

Abducted and murdered in Pakistan in May by persons as yet unknown, Syed Saleem Shahzad was a remarkable journalist. Over many years while reporting for Asian Times Online he had won the trust of elements of the Pakistan Taliban and even of al-Qaeda. Ilyas Kashmiri, the former Pakistan Army captain who had formed al-Qaeda's 313 Brigade and Shadow Army (Lashkar-e-Zil) and who was behind many of that organisation's most devastating attacks in Pakistan, gave Shahzad his one and only published interview, along with other important figures from the jihadist movement who refused to speak to anyone else.
Sirajuddin Haqqani, leader of the most significant Afghan guerrilla faction, and Qari Ziaur Rehman - another important guerrilla commander and al-Qaeda recruit - both spoke to Shahzad. His access was legendary and he broke many important stories.
His posthumously published book, Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond bin Laden and 9/11 (Pluto Press, London, 2011), contains much new material and is chiefly important for the insight it provides into the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai. Shahzad explains this as a Pakistani intelligence operation that was hijacked by al-Qaeda, or at least a number of former Pakistani Army officers who had allied themselves with al-Qaeda.
Principal amongst these was Major Haroon Ashik, also a former Lashkar-e-Toiba commander, whose intention was to provoke war between India and Pakistan and hence force Pakistan to move troops from anti-guerrilla actions along the Afghan border. Major Haroon was recently named in the US trial of David Headley and Tahawwur Rana. He is now believed to be in prison in Adiala, Pakistan where he is facing abduction charges.
It was Haroon who also came up with the strategy of attacking NATO convoys in Pakistan in an attempt to strangle the Coalition forces in Afghanistan by cutting off their supplies.
Shahzad's book also outlines in detail the way al-Qaeda has burrowed into the Pashtun tribes along the Afgthan-Pakistan border and attempted to break down the old tribal structures and subvert them to its own goals. This is undoubtedly true and one day will be seen by the Pashtuns as their greatest mistake and greatest tragedy.
However, the book is marred in two major respects. 
First, it has not been edited and is very repetitive and contains a mountain of irrelevant material. In addition, the book is incomplete - for example, it only contains footnotes for the first three chapters. Considering Shahzad's untimely death this can perhaps be forgiven.
The second weakness is more substantial. Shahzad seems to have fallen for much of al-Qaeda's propaganda. He offers few criticisms and sees the last five years as an unbroken chain of success after success. He refers to the devastating drone attacks that have wiped out most of the al-Qaeda leadership in FATA, but still believes they are on the verge of driving the Coalition forces out of Afghanistan. He suggests that al-Qaeda has subsumed both the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban beneath its black banner and dominates them politically, militarily and ideologically.
Shahzad thinks 2012 will be the year of victory for al-Qaeda, but couches it in the language of mystical Islam. In some ways we should thank him for exposing the wackiness that is at the heart of al-Qaeda's misbegotten form of Islam, even if he appears to have succumbed to it himself. You need look no further than the last couple of paragraphs of the book to see this:
"Al-Qaeda's next aim is to occupy the promised land of ancient Khurasan, with its boundaries stretching from all the way from Central Asia to Khyber Paktoonkhwa, through Afghanistan and then expand the theatre of war to India.
"The promised Messiah, the Mahdi, will then rise in the Middle East and al-Qaeda will mobilise its forces from Ancient Khurasan for the liberation of Palestine, where a final victory will guarantee the revival of a Global Muslim Caliphate."
That is literally Shahzad's conclusion. No word here of the Arab Spring and the rejection by the Arab Street of Islam as a vehicle for revolution. He sees al-Qaeda's predicted success as the fulfilment of an ancient religious prophesy. But while this messianism at the heart of al-Qaeda's religious philosophy is something that has not received the attention it deserves, it also firmly puts that organisation into the camp of failed revolutions and crackpot religious fantasies. It is only a pity that an astute and well informed writer like Shahzad should fail to see the essential idiocy of such thinking. Roll on 2012.

Murder of one of Pakistan's finest journalists

Syed Saleem Shahzad

The murder of Asia Times Pakistan bureau chief Syed Saleem Shahzad, who was abducted on Sunday evening, is a tragedy for reporting in that country. Shahzad was on his way to take part in a TV talk show in Islamabad when he disappeared. His body, which showed signs of torture, was found by a canal in Mandi Bahauddin in Punjab, 80 miles south of the capital. He leaves a wife, two sons and a daughter.
Shahzad had been warned in the past by Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency about critical articles he had written and had told friends and colleagues he feared for his life. A recent article he wrote on al-Qaeda infiltration in the Pakistan Navy is thought by some to have been the reason for his kidnap and murder.
This article suggested that al-Qaeda carried out the 18-hour siege on the PNS Mehran naval air station in Karachi on 22 May after talks between the navy and al-Qaeda over the release of naval ratings who had been arrested on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda had broken down.
The attack, in which two US-supplied Orion surveillance aircraft were destroyed and ten soldiers killed, was a huge embarrassment to the Pakistan military and followed three attacks on navy buses in the last month in which nine service personnel were killed. Clearly the attackers were trying to make a point. Shahzad said in his article that they came from Ilyas Kashmiri's 313 Brigade, the military section of al-Qaeda.
Shahzad went on to say that Pakistani naval intelligence had recently traced an al-Qaeda cell operating within several navy bases in Karachi. When messages were intercepted hinting at an attack on visiting American officials it was decided to arrest at least ten ratings, mostly of lower rank. Almost immediately the officer in charge received death threats from al-Qaeda which made it clear that they knew where the ratings were being held. The prisoners were quickly moved to a safer location, but the threats continued.
Shahzad says that such was the threat that a senior-level naval conference was held at which it was decided to open up negotiations with al-Qaeda. An approach was made to Abdul Samad Mansoori, a member of 313 brigade who lives in North Waziristan. He demanded the immediate release of the ratings, but the navy wanted to interrogate them and then discharge them from the armed services. Al-Qaeda's response was the attacks on the naval buses.
This in turn was followed by more arrests, including a naval commando from the Mahsud tribe of South Waziristan with close links to Tehreek-e-Taliban leader Hakimullah Mahsud. Following the death of bin Laden on 2 May, the militants decided to launch an attack on PNS Mehran. Shahzad says that insiders at the base provided maps, pictures of exit and entry routes, the location of hangars and details of the likely reaction from external security forces. Three groups entered the base: one targeted the aircraft, one engaged the response force and a third section escaped as the others provided covering fire. Up to six escaped, while four were killed on the base.
Shahzad was a superb journalist and despatches like this one will be sorely missed. Pakistan remains a deadly place for serious journalists.