This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
Even as it turns out that the jihadi plot that the British authorities thwarted so spectacularly had the usual Pakistani connection, the Musharraf regime is alreading using the ‘assistance’ it provided to embellish its FATWAT credentials.
Pakistani officials said Thursday that they were informed about the plot by their British counterparts in December and that they actively assisted with the investigation. “We were in the loop since the blip appeared on the radar screen in London last year,” said a senior Pakistani intelligence official. [WP]
Arrests have been made and more assistance is promised, and all it took was a ‘blip on the radar screen in London’. No one in the Pakistani government did the reasonable thing and asked the British authorities for evidence first.
The Musharraf regime will add this too to the litany of its performance in the war against terrorism—arrested 600 al-Qaeda operatives, thousands of troops fighting al-Qaeda in Waziristan etc. It will find it much more difficult to answer just why, in spite of all this, jihadis from around the world come to Pakistan for training, funds and operational assistance. The truth is, capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and is immediate colleagues is far less important for international security than is the decommissioning of Pakistan’s jihadi establishment. The guerilla war in the godforsaken mountains of Waziristan has ended up as the primary theatre in the war against radical Islamic terrorism. That’s probably important, but not critical. What is critical is coercing Gen Musharraf and the Pakistani military establishment to really (as opposed to just cosmetically) get rid of all those Lashkars, Jaishs, Harkats, Hizbs and their associated ‘charitable’ organisations. For it is still playing both sides of the hares and hounds game.
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