31.12.2010, 13:15
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Zitat:Al-Qaeda finds new friends
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
"In the view of American spy agencies, Osama bin Laden and a dwindling cadre of al-Qaeda operatives hiding in Pakistan no longer have the capacity to carry out a terror plot similar to the September 11 attacks."
US Vice President Joe Biden
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Al-Qaeda became reliant on local partners, namely the Afghan Taliban, Pakistani pro-Taliban tribes, anti-Shi'ite outfits such as the Laskhar-e-Jhangvi and ideological mercenaries in Pakistan's Islamic madrassas - seminaries - and groups. Al-Qaeda's overall strategy became diluted in the process. It faced a similar situation in Iraq and Somalia.
Two major developments then rejuvenated al-Qaeda. The first was the come-back of the Taliban in Afghanistan after 2006, the second the mass migration of battle-hardened commanders to Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area - they had previously been fighting in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Veteran leaders like Ilyas Kashmiri and Badr Mansoor absorbed al-Qaeda's ideology and this fusion of ideology and the astute guerrilla strategy of well-trained fighters by 2007-2008 helped create a new army for al-Qaeda in South Asia.
Two major jail breaks - in 2006 and 2010 - in Yemen also solved a leadership crisis in the Arabian Peninsula and Somalia and helped al-Qaeda to revive its operations in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East and North Africa.
These developments have given al-Qaeda a commanding position in South Asia, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia, and reduced its dependency on local partners like the Taliban, the Iraqi resistance, Yemeni tribes and Somalia's insurgent groups. Now al-Qaeda can effectively manipulate these groups for its cause.
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Balochistan province borders Afghanistan's southwestern regions of Kandahar and Helmand , the spiritual heartland of the Taliban where the real Afghan Taliban, the Kandahari clan, with no al-Qaeda influence, runs the insurgency.
"This is evidence that the situation is clearly slipping out of control," a senior security official told Asia Times Online. "There was a hope in the past that Pakistan could intervene and talk through the Taliban who run southwestern Afghanistan without any al-Qaeda influence, but if they have opened a theater in Balochistan, that means the situation is taking a new turn and the war theater will flare up."
This coincides with a crucial stage in the region when Balochistan is the main factor in a struggle between Chinese and United States interests running all the way from Balochistan's Gwadar port to Central Asia via Kandahar and Herat in Afghanistan.
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