Al-Qaeda ‘re-emerging’ in Pakistan: US military

BAGRAM AIR BASE (Afghanistan)—The US military said Tuesday it expected Al-Qaeda to continue its “re-emergence” in sanctuaries in Pakistan’s tribal areas from where it supported attacks in Afghanistan.
Sanctuary was provided to Al-Qaeda and Taliban rebels after Islamabad signed a peace deal with militants in a desperate attempt to quell the unrest in its federally administered areas in September 2006, a US military official said.
The militants called off the deal in July this year after Pakistani security forces raided a radical mosque in Islamabad where rebels had massed. Dozens were killed in those raids.
“This area remains a support and sanctuary area for the insurgency as results of those peace accords,” US Major Tim Williams, future operations intelligence planner, told reporters at Bagram Air Field, the main US base in Afghanistan. He said the Islamic rebels were likely to maintain their presence in those areas despite apparent efforts by Pakistani army to root them out.
“In the federally administered tribal areas, we anticipate sanctuary in this region to continue the Al-Qaeda re-emergence,” Williams said. “What we’re looking into over the next 12 months ... is the ability and the capability of the enemy to attempt to retain the success, some of the successes, that they have had in that area.”
This “sanctuary” could shelter the fugitive Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the Taliban’s supreme chief, Mullah Mohammad Omar, the officer said.
Most Taliban leaders fled to the Pakistan’s mainly Pashtun tribal belt following the 2001 US invasion which toppled the largely Pashtun group from power for sheltering Al-Qaeda, which had training camps here.
Asked if there was an increased Al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan, Williams said Al-Qaeda operatives did not normally cross into this country to carry out operations but provided the necessary resources and training.
The Taliban’s insurgency has grown steadily, particularly in the past two years, with suicide bombings in a hallmark of the violence. The militia claimed responsibility for a suicide attack in Kabul Tuesday that killed 11 people.
Several people waiting at the bus stop suspected the bomber of having explosives because he let one police bus go by without boarding it, said Saqi and another shop owner, Ajmal Khan.
Tuesday’s explosion is the third attack in four months against police or army buses in Kabul.
On Saturday a suicide bomber wearing an army uniform blew himself up in an army bus, killing 30 people. In June a bomb ripped through a bus carrying police instructors in Kabul, killing 35 people, the deadliest insurgent attack since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.
Separately, a U.S.-led coalition soldier was killed by gunfire Tuesday morning while conducting combat operations in the northeastern province of Kunar. Three other soldiers were wounded, the coalition said in a statement. The nationalities of the soldiers wasn’t provided, but most soldiers in eastern Afghanistan are American.
Militants in Kunar attacked a border security post, killing three police, said Zargun Shah Khaliqyar, the provincial governor’s spokesman. It was not clear if the two incidents in Kunar were related.
Violence has surged in Afghanistan this year and has spiked particularly in recent weeks. More than 4,600 people have been killed in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press count based on official figures.—Agencies