Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command to al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, has released his first English-language video call for jihad in Pakistan, the US-based IntelCenter said on Sunday.
The message was aired on Pakistan’s ARY television network, IntelCenter said in a statement, adding that it marked “the first official message ever ... in which he speaks English.”
Zawahiri “calls for the people to support jihad in Pakistan and lists a litany of grievances against the Pakistani government and US involvement there,” said IntelCenter, which monitors extremist Web sites and communications.
In particular, Zawahiri accuses Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf of being “thirsty for money and a bribeseeker,” arguing that he is working to support US and Western interests and that he has committed crimes against Muslims all over the world.
Zawahiri also calls Abdul Qadeer Khan — the father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb under house arrest for transferring nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea — a “scapegoat to appease the Americans.”
“Let there be no doubt in your minds that the dominant political forces at work in Pakistan today are competing to appease and please the modern day crusaders in the White House, and are working to destabilize this nuclear capable nation under the aegis of America,” Zawahiri was quoted as saying by IntelCenter.
In related news, Pakistan’s intelligence agency is helping the Taliban pursue an insurgency in Afghanistan that has seen a 50 percent hike in attacks in some areas this year, a NATO commander said.
The number of foreign fighters, including Europeans, is also increasing while NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) still lacks the soldiers it needs, US General David McKiernan said in a weekend interview.
“There certainly is a level of ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] complicity in the militant areas in Pakistan and organizations such as the Taliban,” the four-star general said, echoing allegations by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and others. “I can’t say to what level of leadership that goes to but there are indications of complicity on the part of ISI ... to the extent that they are facilitating these militant groups that come out of the tribal areas in Pakistan.”
Karzai has directly accused the ISI of fueling the unrest in Afghanistan, which sees near daily militant attacks, but Pakistan has rejected the claim.
Meanwhile, Taliban militants attacked two Pakistani security posts in a tribal area bordering Afghanistan on yesterday, sparking fierce clashes in which 20 rebels were killed, officials said.
Fighters attacked a paramilitary fortress and stormed a checkpost in the semi-autonomous Bajaur tribal zone, a known haunt of al-Qaeda and Taliban rebels, they said.
“The Taliban launched a big attack on Tor Ghundi fort and Iskandro post. Security forces responded and 20 militants were killed,” a paramilitary official told reporters.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS