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.

Group behind abduction of Linda Norgrove

Interesting Daily Telegraph article on Jamaat-ud-Dawa al-Quran wal'Sunnah and its leader Qari Ziaur Rahman, the group thought to have been responsible for kidnapping Linda Norgrove. Surprisingly little has been written about this organisation, considering its long history and significance in Kunar and Nuristan. Anyone got any more info? Qari Ziaur Rahman, who is also said to be the most senior Taliban leader in Kunar province - others say he works for al-Qaeda - was wrongly reported killed in US airstrikes both last year and again in March this year. The US is known to have posted a $350,000 reward some time ago for his death or capture, but he appears to have avoided both so far. An interview with him, conducted by Asia Times in 2008, can be found here.

Another Pakistan Taliban leader killed?

In yet another blow to the remnants of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, one of the organisation's stalwarts, Maulvi Faqir Mohammad, is reported to have been killed in a Pakistani Army airstrike on a hideout in Mohmand Agency yesterday, along with around 20 of his supporters.
Faqir Mohammad, a former teacher, was a deputy leader of the TTP and for a short while following the death of the organisation's former leader, Baitullah Mahsud in August last year, claimed he was the temporary leader.
His usual area of operations was in Bajaur Agency, an area which has recently seen a major offensive by the Pakistani Army. However, he was also active in the Swat Valley following the TTP's takeover last year.
Noted for his close relations with al-Qaeda - and in particular to Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri - Mohammad's death, if confirmed, will be a huge blow to the TTP. Although he did not come from the TTP's heartland of Waziristan, he held considerable sway in Mohmand and Bajaur. Another senior TTP commander, Qari Ziaur Rehman, is believed to have been killed in the same raid. Ziaur Rehman was believed to be the head of the Taliban in Kunar and Nuristan provinces of Afghanistan and the US had offered a reward of USD 350,000 for him.
Reports said he would often move from Bajaur Agency to Afghanistan with his fighters to carry out attacks on US-led forces. Omar Rehman, alias Fateh Muhammad, is the third TTP leader killed in the airstrike, which took place in the Pandiali area of Mohmand. He was best known for leading Taliban fighters from Swat into Buner, a district located 100 km from Islamabad, last year.
Update: Reuters is claiming that one of its reporters spoke to Faqir Mohammad yesterday, who claimed he was uninjured. "I'm fine. It's just propaganda," said the man on the telephone who identified himself as Mohammad. The Reuters reporter said he recognized his voice.
"I was in Bajaur, not Mohmand that day. None of our commanders were killed in the attack. We lost some fighters and women," said the man purporting to be Mohammad.

Splits develop within Pakistan Taliban

Even if a growing number of reports saying that Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan leader Hakimullah Mahsud is dead are not true, problems are growing for the organisation. In Bajaur, near to the Khyber Pass, splits are opening up. Dawn reports that Maulana Faqir Mohammad - deputy chief of the TTP and once a close associate of former TTP leader Baitullah Mahsud - has been replaced as leader of the Bajaur TTP.
The report says he has been replaced by Maulana Mohammad Jamal, aka Maulvi Dadullah. Faqir Mohammad's supporters, who are in the minority, continue to claim he is leading the TTP in the region, but this is strongly denied by Maulvi Dadullah's supporters.
The origin of this split appears to have emerged last summer when Faqir Mohammad told his followers not to resist government troops who were advancing towards the militant stronghold of Varr Mamond. He was opposed by a majority of the local TTP shura.
At the time, other senior commanders, including Qari Ziaur Rehman and Maulana Inayet Rehman, intervened and worked out a compromise.
However, the split has now broken into the open. In the last few days there has been heavy fighting in the area between the Pakistan Army and militants, with the Army claiming to have killed at least 15 of the militants.
If these reports about splits are true it will be a massive setback for the TTP. Maulvi Faqir Mohammad has been a central figure in the organisation for some time. Born in 1970 in the Bajaur Agency, he is a member of the Mohmand tribe. Formerly affiliated with the TNSM led by Sufi Mohammad, he has publicly stated that he has close ties to al-Qaeda's No 2, Dr Ayman Zawahiri.
After Baitullah's death in August last year, Faqir Mohammad first announced that he had assumed temporary command of the TTP, but later declared that Hakimullah had been elected leader by a TTP shura of 42 men. Amongst other things, he is accused of orchestrating the 8 November 2006 suicide attack on an Army training centre at Dargai in NWFP which killed 45 recruits of the Punjab Regiment Centre.
As for Hakimullah, almost nothing has been heard from him since the TTP admitted that he had been injured in a drone strike on 14 January. They issued a tape recording of his voice, but it sounded weak. Now the reports say that he died in the last few days while being looked after at the house of his second wife's father in Mamozai village in Orakzai Agency.