US Tip-off Behind Pakistan Madrasah Bombing

Analysts believe the blood of the 80 innocent people would diminish the chances of durable peace in the Pakistani tribal region.

"Local informers hired by the US intelligence agencies had wrongly tipped them off about the presence of Ayman al-Zawahiri," a senior intelligence official told IslamOnline.net, requesting anonymity for the sensitivity of the issue.

Intelligence sources said the American tip-off was totally based on human intelligence.

They asserted that no satellite or any other evidence was provided to the Pakistani government about the presence of Al-Qaeda number two or any other Al-Qaeda leader at the madrasah.

Pakistani troops backed by missile-firing helicopters attacked the madrasah on Monday, October 30, killing 80 people.

Although the government claims that all the deceased were militants and were being trained for suicide attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan, local sources and the government officials, speaking off the record, assert that several children, aged between 8 and 15, died in the bombing.

One of the three students who survived the air strike insists "there were at least 20 children aged between 8 and 15 years".

"We never saw Ayman al-Zawahiri or any foreigner there. We were memorizing the Qur'an there," said Abdul Rehman, 16, who is being treated at a private hospital in Peshawar with almost 70 percent of his body burnt in the bombing.

He said that he and several of his colleagues were preparing for prayers at the time of the pre-dawn strike.

Former senior minister of NWFP government, who led the funeral prayers of the deceased, told the newsmen that he personally saw the charred bodies of minor children.

Reports reaching from Bajur suggest that five children of a single family died in the bombing.

Local residents, including a member of the national assembly, Mualana Haroon Rasheed, claim that the strike was carried out by US drones, and not by the Pakistani army.

The contention has been supported by ABC TV, whose local correspondent also carried the same report.

Intelligence sources say they received reports that a US drone was seen hovering over the target a few minutes before the attack, however it did not bomb.

Out of Fear

At a briefing arranged by the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) a day after the incident, army spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan appeared to be completely bamboozled as he could not satisfy the journalists who wanted to know about the weapons recovered from the scene.

He showed some unclear pictures in which various people are seen busy in exercise.

According to General Sultan, those engaged in exercise were about to trickle into Afghanistan to carry out suicide attacks.

Later, the army spokesman admitted that the deceased were not getting military training there. He claimed they were being mentally prepared for suicide attacks.

Asked why Pakistani intelligence officials did not ask for concrete proofs about Zawahiri's presence, the intelligence official told IOL the government feared that if it did not act on the information immediately, the US would take matters into its own hand and embarrass the regime one more time.

"If we had not acted promptly, then US forces would have done that," he said, citing the Damadola attack.

American authorities have welcomed the madrasah strike, heaping praise on Pakistani security forces.

Intelligence sources told IOL that after the Damadola strike Islamabad and Washington agreed that the next time US intelligence agencies inform Pakistan about the movement or presence of Al-Qaeda leaders in the area Pakistani troops would immediately act on the information.

Eighteen civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in January when US jet fighters bombarded Damadola on a tip-off given by a local informer about the presence of Zawahiri.

The tip-off had later proved wrong and Washington tendered a customary apology but refused to retrain from such air strikes in future within Pakistan, saying it would continue to hunt down Al-Qaeda leaders anywhere in the world.

The situation in the 700-Km-long tribal belt ranging from Chaman to north eastern Afghanistan has worsened since the madrasah strike with hundreds of angry youths volunteering for suicide attacks to avenge the victims.

Analysts believe that the blood of the 80 innocent people would jeopardized the past and future peace agreements between the tribesmen and the government, diminishing the chances of durable peace in the region.

They also maintain that too much dependence by the US intelligence agencies on local informers, who some times act as double agents, is the major reason behind such blunders.

Several local informers hired by the FBI and the CIA in tribal areas have been killed by the local Taliban.

These informers sometimes provide unconfirmed and weak information to the US intelligence for money or to settle down their personal rivalries, which are a common phenomenon in tribal society.

Spider Group

Three years ago, America's FBI organized some former Pakistani army officers, Muslims and Christians, and intelligence officials into what is known as "Spider Group" to locate Al-Qaeda and Taliban fugitives allegedly hiding in tribal areas of Pakistan along the Afghan border.

The Peshawar-based Spider Group consists largely of retired Pakistan army officers, some of whom had reached the rank of brigadier and colonel, sources familiar with the operation say.

Initially, the Spider group was assigned to keep an eye on public gatherings and seminars, especially those involving the leaders of Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI), which has been close to Taliban leaders.

Later, the groups was asked to recruit locals in the country's tribal areas, where the FBI believes hundreds of Taliban and Al-Qaeda fugitives are holed up under the patronage of tribal chiefs.

Members of the Spider group have been trained and equipped by the FBI and they all have command of Pushto language spoken in the region.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview released Thursday, September 21, that the US blackmailed his country by threatening to bomb it "back to the Stone Age" after the 9/11 attacks unless it supported the war on terror.

Shortly after 9/11, Pakistan abandoned its support for the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan and became a front-line ally in Washington's o-called war on terror.

The South Asian country has since deployed around 80,000 troops on the rugged border with Afghanistan to hunt pro-Taliban and Al-Qaeda elements.