'I wonder what Pepe Escobar makes of all this?' I asked myself.
Fortunately, we now have a chance to find out.
DRM
====
The al-Zawahiri Fiasco
Pepe Escobar, Asia Times, March 23, 2004
It featured all the trappings of a glorified video game. Thousands of Pakistani army and paramilitary troops played the hammer. Hundreds of US troops and Special Forces, plus the elite commando 121, were ready to play the anvil across the border in Afghanistan. What was supposed to be smashed in between was "high- value target" Ayman al-Zawahiri, as Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf enthusiastically bragged -- with no hard evidence -- to an eager CNN last Thursday. But what happened to this gigantic piece of psy-ops? Nothing. And for a very simple reason: al-Qaeda's brain and Osama bin Laden's deputy was never there in the first place.
And even if he was, as Taliban-connected sources in Peshawar told Asia Times Online, he would choose to die as a martyr rather than be captured and paraded as a US trophy.
It now appears that world public opinion fell victim to a Musharraf-inspired web of disinformation. In the early stages of the battle west of Wana in South Waziristan, Taliban spokesman Abdul Samad, speaking by satellite telephone from Kandahar province in Afghanistan, was quick to say that talk of al-Zawahiri being cornered was "just propaganda by the US coalition and by the Pakistani army to weaken Taliban morale". Subsequently, Peshawar sources were quoting al-Qaeda operatives from inside Saudi Arabia as saying that both bin Laden and al-Zawahiri had left this part of the tribal areas as early as January.
On the Afghan side, General Atiquallah Ludin at the Defense Ministry in Kabul was saying that "al-Qaeda cannot escape or enter Afghan soil". But by this time the majority of the mujahideen previously based in South Waziristan had already managed to cross back to Paktika province in Afghanistan -- mostly to areas around Urgun, Barmal and Gayan. This rugged, mountainous territory is quintessentially Taliban. Many local Pashtun tribals don't even know who (Afghan president) Hamid Karzai is.
It would have been almost impossible for the mujahideen to cross to Paktika after the start of operation "hammer and anvil". By last Saturday, Mohammed Gaus, district mayor of Orgun -- where the Americans keep a base -- was saying that "the Pakistanis seem to have closed the border". The Americans have a main base in the village of Shkin, in Paktika, less than 25 kilometers to the west of the battleground cordoned off by the Pakistani army in South Waziristan. This base accommodates not only the US Army, but contingents of the Central Intelligence Agency and Special Forces, as well as members of commando 121 itself (the "anvil" side). On the "hammer" side, the Americans supply the Pakistani army with satellite photos, intelligence collected by drones and listening stations, and have installed electronic sensors and radars along the border.
All the time the Pakistani government and army were insisting that the US did not put any pressure on them to launch operation hammer and anvil. So according to military spokesman Major General Sultan, it was "just a coincidence" that US Secretary of State Colin Powell was in Islamabad at the height of the operation, and that Pakistan was being rewarded with the status of major non-North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally.
High-value target Musharraf swore that his commanders told him a "high-value target" was in the South Waziristan tribal area, based on American intelligence. Washington believed it, quoting Pakistani intelligence. In the end, it was local intelligence that revealed that the target may in fact be Tahir Yuldash, who took control of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan after its leader Juma Namangani was killed by American bombing in November 2001 in Afghanistan.
[...]
full at
http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=04/03/24/1727259&mode=nested&tid=1