US targets safe house in North Waziristan (03:03PM)

The US has struck inside the North Waziristan tribal agency for the second time in three days. "Two missiles struck a compound just outside Miramshah but we do not have the number of casualties at the moment," an anonymous Pakistan security official told Geo TV.

Four people were reported killed in the strike. It is unclear if any senior al Qaeda or Taliban senior leaders were among those killed.

The last US airstrike in North Waziristan targeted a meeting of senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, AFP reported. "There was a meeting of around 30 foreign Al-Qaeda and local Taliban commanders in the house of Hafiz Sahar Gul but the majority of them left the building ten minutes before the missile struck," a security official told AFP. Six low-level al Qaeda operatives and three others were killed in the Oct. 9 airstrike.

Background on strikes in Pakistan and the targeting of the Haqqani Network

The US has been heavily targeting the Haqqani Network in North Waziristan since attacks were stepped up at the end of August. Ten of the 15 strikes conducted in Pakistan's tribal areas since Aug. 31 have hit Haqqani assets in North Waziristan. A US strike hit the Haqqani's main mosque in Miramshah on Sept. 9, sparking a series of attacks against Pakistani forces in North Waziristan.

The powerful Haqqani family controls the Miramshah region in North Waziristan. The Haqqanis run a parallel government in North Waziristan and conduct military and suicide operations in eastern Afghanistan. Jalaluddin and Siraj Haqqani have close ties to Osama bin Laden. Siraj is one of the most wanted terrorist commanders in Afghanistan for his involvement in a string of deadly attacks and for recruiting and training foreign terrorists for suicide attacks.

The US stepped up attacks in Pakistan's tribal areas this year after the Taliban and al Qaeda consolidated control in the tribal regions and settled districts of the Northwest Frontier Province. There have been 23 recorded cross-border attacks and attempts in Pakistan in 2008, compared to 10 strikes during 2006 and 2007 combined.

These attacks are designed to interdict al Qaeda’s ability to conduct attacks against the West as well as degrade the Taliban’s support network being used against NATO forces in Afghanistan. Three senior al Qaeda leaders have been killed in the attacks.

The Taliban, al Qaeda, and allied terrorist groups have established 157 training camps and more than 400 support locations in the tribal areas and the Northwest Frontier Province, US intelligence officials have told The Long War Journal.

US attacks inside Pakistan and incidents along the border in 2008:

• US targets safe house in North Waziristan
Oct. 11, 2008
• US strike kills 9 al Qaeda and Taliban in North Waziristan
Oct. 9, 2008
• US conducts two strikes in North Waziristan
Oct. 3, 2008
• Taliban: Baitullah Mehsud alive; US strike in North Waziristan
Oct. 1, 2008
• Pakistan military fires on ISAF forces
Sept. 25, 2008
• Pakistani military fires on US helicopters at border
Sept. 22, 2008
• US strikes Taliban camp in South Waziristan
Sept. 17, 2008
• Report: US helicopters fired on while crossing Pakistani border
Sept. 15, 2008
• US hits compound in North Waziristan,
Sept. 12, 2008
• US targets Haqqani Network in North Waziristan,
Sept. 8, 2008
• US airstrike killed five al Qaeda operatives in North Waziristan,
Sept. 5, 2008
• Report: US airstrike kills four in North Waziristan,
Sept. 4, 2008
• Pakistanis claim US helicopter-borne forces assaulted village in South Waziristan,
Sept. 3, 2008
• US hits al Qaeda safe house in North Waziristan,
Aug. 31, 2008
• Five killed in al Qaeda safe house strike in South Waziristan,
Aug. 31, 2008
• Al Qaeda safe house targeted in South Waziristan strike,
Aug. 20, 2008
• Cross-border strike targets one of the Taliban's 157 training camps in Pakistan's northwest,
Aug. 13, 2008
• Six killed in strike in South Waziristan,
July 28, 2008
• Report: Strike targets Baitullah Mehsud's hideout in Pakistan,
June 14, 2008
• Senior Algerian al Qaeda operative killed in May 14 strike inside Pakistan,
May 24, 2008
• Missile strike kills 20 in South Waziristan,
March 16, 2008
• Unprecedented Coalition strike nails the Haqqani Network in North Waziristan,
March 13, 2008
• Missile strike on al Qaeda meeting in South Waziristan kills 13,
Feb. 28, 2008
• Senior al Qaeda leader Abu Laith al Libi killed in North Waziristan,
Jan. 31, 2008

Deadwalkers in Ramadi (10:36AM)

RAMADI, IRAQ: The troops assigned to the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines call themselves the “Walking Dead,” but on this deployment, their missions have involved little killing – precious little combat at all, in fact. For the past seven months, the battalion has spent its first deployment to Iraq conducting operations worlds apart from what their predecessors in other wars saw – and worlds apart, too, from the operations that previous battalions conducted in Ramadi, the Anbari capital that was once the heart of the Sunni insurgency in this country.

Equally dramatic has been the reorganization of the unit for these new operations. The 1/9 advises Iraqi police units across a battlespace that an entire Army brigade once held down with difficulty. With its 45-man rifle platoons almost all broken down into 12-man adviser teams, the 1/9 Marines is almost unrecognizable as a traditional infantry battalion.

Two paths have converged in this deployment. The first is the path taken by the city of Ramadi, once one of the most contested cities in Iraq, to its current state of relative calm, with the security situation largely managed by Iraqi police units. The second is the path taken by 1/9 Marines, from its formal standup less than two years ago when the Marine Corps needed new battalions to sustain the brutal fight in Anbar, to its deployment as a radically reorganized advisory task force this past spring.

As recently as two years ago, the idea of deploying a Marine battalion to Ramadi in an advisory rather than a straight infantry capacity would have seemed unfathomable to many observers. To think that such a unit could control the volatile area then home to five full combat battalions would have seemed downright absurd. Then, Ramadi was home turf for al Qaeda in Iraq, the terrorist group fueling sectarian violence in central Iraq; huge improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, made large portions of the city impassable to the beleaguered units deployed there, which suffered fatalities at least weekly.

Today, though, the scars left by heavy machine gun and M1 Abrams main gun rounds are the only reminder of what Ramadi once was – it is a city reborn. During its deployment, according to records kept by the battalion, the Marines of 1/9 have been engaged in fewer than 10 “troops in contact” incidents (cases in which troops and insurgents exchanged gunfire), and there have been barely a dozen IED attacks on the unit’s vehicles. Two Marines have been killed, both early in the tour – a far cry from the days in which Army brigades in Ramadi suffered 70 or 80 fatalities on a deployment.

The turnaround in Ramadi is not the work of 1/9 Marines. That credit belongs to the pair of US Army brigades and the Marine battalions attached to them, and an Iraqi Army brigade that painstakingly cleared the worst insurgent strongholds during the fierce fighting of summer 2006 and late winter 2007, and to the Iraqi policemen who, following the lead of Abdul Sattar al Rishawi and other local sheikhs, stood up to al-Qaeda en masse beginning in fall 2006.

What 1/9 has done is manage success. Since the departure of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division in April, the 1/9 alone has been responsible for a vast area of operations in and around Ramadi. The region is wrought with tribal and political tensions. The US command and Iraqi government have held up Ramadi as a model of success. That the battalion has in fact pushed progress forward and into the hands of the Iraqi police across the area is seen as an encouraging sign as Anbar heads toward both provincial elections and further U.S. troop withdrawals.

This fall, in Ramadi and the rural areas surrounding it, the Marines of 1/9 and its replacement battalion, 2/9, have essentially pulled back not only from daily counterinsurgency operations, but also from their daily advisory role – a reflection of the increasing confidence and efficacy of the Iraqi police units that patrol the city.

On a night last week that Marines here characterized as unusually eventful, the company in charge of the city itself, Weapons Company, 2/9 Marines, commanded by Captain Dallas Shaw, found itself following the trail of the police rather than of insurgents. After a rocket attack marred the calm of northeastern Ramadi, police units from three districts had shared intelligence and detained suspects by the time Marine based at nearby Camp Karama had arrived on the scene.

A hallmark of the conflict in Iraq, for the US military, has been the constant need to reorganize units in the country on an ad hoc basis, to adapt formations better suited for conventional combat to the requirements of counterinsurgency and advisory operations. The battalions that preceded 1/9 in Ramadi trained and organized for difficult urban combat of the kind the city saw daily for years. As violence dropped during 2007, the units were compelled to reorganize on the fly. By contrast, 1/9 reorganized as an advisory task force well before it deployed, and retained that organization for the bulk of the deployment as it maintained small teams of police advisers across the sector.

In reorganizing and preparing for the advisory mission, 1/9 Marines enjoyed several advantages over other deploying units, according to the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Brett Bourne. To begin with, the battalion was effectively a blank slate, with no prior deployments to the old, violent Anbar fight to unduly influence its training.

As part of the Marine Corps’s expansion for the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, 1/9 began to form during 2006 and officially stood up as an active unit in April 2007, a year before it deployed to Ramadi. This, Bourne emphasized, gave the battalion almost a year to train for the mission, a significant boost over the seven months that most Marine battalions have between deployments in the “seven on, seven off” cycle of combat tours. After its training all autumn for basic combat skills, culminating in the Mojave Viper exercises at the end of 2007, the battalion still had all winter to make changes in its structure and planning.

After a pre-deployment “leaders’ recon” in December 2007, during which the 1/9 leadership learned that they would be replacing two full battalions, Bourne and his staff and commanders instituted a sweeping change, based on reorganizations that other units had been forced to conduct once in theater. In three of the battalion’s four companies, every rifle platoon was dissolved, and the resulting pool of Marines was divided into roughly 35 advisory detachments called Police Transition Teams (PTTs); one rifle company remained as a general reserve.

In a Marine Corps based around infantry formations, and particularly rifle platoons, this change was a drastic one, but Bourne dismisses the idea that the battalion’s basic infantry skills might suffer from it later – those, he says, are “muscle memory” for Marine units. True or not, 1/9’s pre-deployment reorganization into advisory teams has been a major step in the military’s adaption to new kinds of operations. The deployment of such a reorganized battalion to Ramadi, once the most dangerous infantry battleground in the country, signifies a major step in Anbar’s move from a province all but written off as lost to the Sunni insurgency, to a province under Iraqi control in fact as well as name.

Suicide bomber hits tribal meeting in Pakistan (08:18AM)

The Taliban continue to attack the nascent tribal organizing against it movement in Pakistan’s turbulent northwest. A suicide bomber struck at a meeting of Ali Zai tribal leaders in the Arakzai tribal agency, killing 55 and wounding more than 100.

The attack occurred as the tribal leaders were in the middle of a meeting to discuss the formation of a tribal militia, or lashkar, to secure the region and oppose the Taliban. More than 500 members of the tribe were present at the meeting, according to Geo TV.

The government has been fighting the Taliban in the city of Darra Adam Khel and in neighboring Kohat after the Taliban took control of the Indus Highway and the Kohat Tunnel. The military was able to reopen the tunnel and the highway after the Taliban held it for almost a month.

The Taliban have ruthlessly targeted tribes looking to back the government. Tribes in Kohat attempted to organize against the Taliban in January 2008. A suicide attack on a tribal leader’s meeting in early March killed 40 and wounded more than 40. Several senior tribal leaders were killed, and the organized resistance to the Taliban faltered.

The Pakistani government has been courting the tribes to support the efforts to take on the Taliban in the tribal areas and in the settled districts of the Northwest Frontier Province. Tribal lashkars have been formed in Peshawar, Swat, Dir, Buner, Bajaur, Khyber, and Arakzai.

But the government has failed to obtain support from the major tribes, senior US military intelligence sources told The Long War Journal [see Pakistani Army rejects Waziristan operation]. The tribes that have been brought into the government’s fold are small and scattered. There is no overarching support mechanism to provide political and ideological support for those who dare to take on the Taliban.

The Taliban maintain support from the major tribal confederations, and have increased their capabilities by forming the Tehrik-e-Taliban, or the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan. This organization has allowed the Taliban to coordinate military, political, and propaganda efforts.

Related:

• Pakistani Army rejects Waziristan operation
Oct. 8, 2008
• Taliban have not split from al Qaeda: sources
Oct. 7, 2008
• Pakistan engages the tribes in effort to fight the Taliban
Sept. 29, 2008

Note: this entry was updated to reflect latest casualty figures.

US strike kills 9 al Qaeda and Taliban in North Waziristan (02:19PM)

The US continues to target al Qaeda and Taliban safe houses and training camps in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal areas. The latest attack killed nine, including six "foreign militants" - a reference to al Qaeda operatives.

At least two missiles were reported to have been fired at two known Taliban safe houses in the village of Tati near the city of Miramshah. A Reuters reporter saw an unmanned US Predator aircraft flying in the area and conducting the attack.

"The attack targeted the house of a local Taliban commander named Hafiz Sahar Gul," The News reported. Three member of Gul's family and six al Qaeda operatives were killed in the strike, according to Pakistani sources. No senior Taliban or al Qaeda leaders have been identified as killed.

The US has been heavily targeting the Haqqani Network in North Waziristan since attacks were stepped up at the end of August. Nine of the 14 strikes conducted in Pakistan's tribal areas since Aug. 31 have hit Haqqani assets in North Waziristan. A US strike hit the Haqqani's main mosque in Miramshah on Sept. 9, sparking a series of attacks against Paksitani forces in North Waziristan.

The powerful Haqqani family controls the Miramshah region in North Waziristan. The Haqqanis run a parallel government in North Waziristan and conduct military and suicide operations in eastern Afghanistan. Jalaluddin and Siraj Haqqani have close ties to Osama bin Laden. Siraj is one of the most wanted terrorist commanders in Afghanistan for his involvement in a string of deadly attacks and for recruiting and training foreign terrorists for suicide attacks.

The Pakistani military has shied away from confronting the Haqqanis and Hafiz Gul Bahadar, another senior Taliban commander in North Waziristan. The military commander assured the Waziri tribes that an operation would not be launched against "militant tribes" in North Waziristan. Instead the military sought to honor the February 2008 peace agreement.

The US has stepped up attacks in Pakistan's tribal areas this year after the Taliban and al Qaeda consolidated control in the tribal regions and settled districts of the Northwest Frontier Province. There have been 23 recorded cross-border attacks and attempts in Pakistan in 2008, compared to 10 strikes during 2006 and 2007 combined.

These attacks are designed to interdict al Qaeda’s ability to conduct attacks against the West as well as degrade the Taliban’s support network being used against NATO forces in Afghanistan. Three senior al Qaeda leaders have been killed in the attacks.

The Taliban, al Qaeda, and allied terrorist groups have established 157 training camps and more than 400 support locations in the tribal areas and the Northwest Frontier Province, US intelligence officials have told The Long War Journal.

The Pakistani military said it had direct orders to "open fire" on any US forces attempting to violate Pakistan's borders. The military has fired on US helicopters along the border at least three times in September. But in a briefing today in parliament, the military said it does not have the capacity to shoot down US Predators and other advanced aircraft.

US attacks inside Pakistan and incidents along the border in 2008:

• US strike kills 9 al Qaeda and Taliban in North Waziristan
Oct. 9, 2008
• US conducts two strikes in North Waziristan
Oct. 3, 2008
• Taliban: Baitullah Mehsud alive; US strike in North Waziristan
Oct. 1, 2008
• Pakistan military fires on ISAF forces
Sept. 25, 2008
• Pakistani military fires on US helicopters at border
Sept. 22, 2008
• US strikes Taliban camp in South Waziristan
Sept. 17, 2008
• Report: US helicopters fired on while crossing Pakistani border
Sept. 15, 2008
• US hits compound in North Waziristan,
Sept. 12, 2008
• US targets Haqqani Network in North Waziristan,
Sept. 8, 2008
• US airstrike killed five al Qaeda operatives in North Waziristan,
Sept. 5, 2008
• Report: US airstrike kills four in North Waziristan,
Sept. 4, 2008
• Pakistanis claim US helicopter-borne forces assaulted village in South Waziristan,
Sept. 3, 2008
• US hits al Qaeda safe house in North Waziristan,
Aug. 31, 2008
• Five killed in al Qaeda safe house strike in South Waziristan,
Aug. 31, 2008
• Al Qaeda safe house targeted in South Waziristan strike,
Aug. 20, 2008
• Cross-border strike targets one of the Taliban's 157 training camps in Pakistan's northwest,
Aug. 13, 2008
• Six killed in strike in South Waziristan,
July 28, 2008
• Report: Strike targets Baitullah Mehsud's hideout in Pakistan,
June 14, 2008
• Senior Algerian al Qaeda operative killed in May 14 strike inside Pakistan,
May 24, 2008
• Missile strike kills 20 in South Waziristan,
March 16, 2008
• Unprecedented Coalition strike nails the Haqqani Network in North Waziristan,
March 13, 2008
• Missile strike on al Qaeda meeting in South Waziristan kills 13,
Feb. 28, 2008
• Senior al Qaeda leader Abu Laith al Libi killed in North Waziristan,
Jan. 31, 2008

Bombings rock Islamabad, Dir (09:40AM)

Pakistan's capital is again the scene of a suicide attack after an explosive-laden car rammed into the Anti-Terrorism Police building. A deadly roadside bombing also took place in Dir, while the parliament continues to be briefed on the security situation in Northwestern Pakistan.

Eight police were wounded in the Islamabad suicide attack. "One part of the building was completely gutted, and about one and half dozen vehicles damaged," Geo TV reported. The attack occurred in the same location as Pakistan's National Training Center and Police Academy.

Police also detained a suspected suicide bomber at the Islamabad airport today.

Today's attack is he latest in a series of Taliban and al Qaeda strikes targeting security forces, government officials, and civilians in Pakistan's major cities and in the northwest. The last major attack occurred in Islamabad at the Marriott Hotel. More than 50 were killed, including 23 Westerners, and mre than 270 were wounded in teh bombings that destroyed the popular hotel.

Ten Pakistanis were killed in a roadside bombing in the settled district of Dir in the Northwest Frontier Province. A police van transporting civilians was targeted, killing four policemen and three prisoners, Geo TV reported. Three children were also killed in the strike as a school bus was close to the attack.

Dir has been the scene of fighting between the local tribes and the Taliban as some tribal leaders have formed militias to oppose the extremists. The Taliban responded by attackinga mosque filled with Ramadan worshippers, killing 25 and wounding more than 50.

Today’s attacks occurred as Pakistan’s military and intelligence services are briefing the parliament on the security situation in northwestern Pakistan. The military admitted that Swat, Shangla, and other unnamed districts outside the tribal areas are under Taliban control. The government has fought in Swat for 11 months and has been unable to clear the region of the Taliban.

The Taliban have been waging a deadly insurgency in northwestern Pakistan and in regions in Baluchistan.

Evaluating the Uighur Threat (01:09AM)

On Tuesday, a federal court ruled that 17 Uighurs (pronounced wee-ghurs) detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba should be released into the US. The decision undoubtedly reflects the belief that the Uighurs pose no serious threat to America or her interests. Their enemy is China, advocates argue, and they have no hostile intentions towards the US.

It is true that the Uighurs’ principal enemy is China, which has long fought a low grade war with the Uighur population. And the Chinese government, which has a miserable human rights record, has undoubtedly committed atrocities. So, it is natural that the Uighur cause would gain at least some popular support in Western countries. But as deplorable as China’s human rights record is, the US courts should not view the Uighurs at Gitmo as a non-threat. And even if the Uighur detainees were focused solely on attacking China, the US would be wrong to condone their cause.

Acts of terrorism against any country, even one with a track record as deplorable as China’s, should not be an acceptable form of resistance. Importantly, the Uighur detainees at Gitmo have all the hallmarks of committed jihadists. There is, therefore, no moral equivalency between their terrorism against China’s oppressive regime (as well as innocent civilians) and other forms legitimate resistance. This crucial distinction should be made clearer by the analysis below.

The Long War Journal has reviewed dozens of unclassified documents pertaining to the Uighur detainees. Five of the 22 Uighur detainees have reportedly been released in Albania, since no other country would take them. But The Long War Journal reviewed the government’s files for all 22 of the Uighurs who were or are detained at Gitmo. The documents were released to the public as a result of Freedom of Information Act requests by the media.

Our review of these documents, coupled with other publicly-available information, reveals several red flags that should be considered when evaluating the threat posed by the detained Uighurs. While no one should confuse any of the Uighurs detained at Gitmo for high-level terrorists such as those comprising al Qaeda’s senior leadership, it is clear that they were training to participate in hostilities. Their cause could easily be directed at American interests. In fact, there is at least some evidence that the terrorist organization responsible for training the Uighur detainees has already targeted US interests.

All of the Uighurs at Gitmo have been associated with, or been members of, the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (“ETIM”).

During the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, many nations contributed to the mujahideen’s cause. This includes China. As terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna explains in his book Inside Al Qaeda, “the People’s Republic of China trained Muslim Uighurs from the country’s far western province of Xinjiang to fight the Russians in Afghanistan.”

In a classic case of blowback, these cadres of Uighurs turned against their one-time patron when they returned home. They agitated for an independent Uighur country and took arms against the Chinese government. Throughout the 1990’s Uighur veterans of the Soviet jihad, and their recruits, executed attacks throughout the Xinjiang province. Their members even hit targets inside Beijing, the heart of China. As Gunaratna has written, this conforms “to al Qaeda’s doctrine of striking the center instead of fighting in the periphery.” It is important to note that while these attacks were often aimed at government targets, civilians were not spared. However, it is not clear how many civilians were killed in this wave of attacks.

The most lethal of the Uighur groups to evolve out of the Soviet jihad is the East Turkistan Islamic Movement. While Uighur separatist groups have struggled against the Chinese government for decades, the ETIM represented a new type of threat. The ETIM and associated groups, unlike their forerunners, is dedicated to international jihad and shares a similar ideology with al Qaeda and the Taliban. While some Uighur separatists may simply want to end Chinese repression, the ETIM is dedicated to establishing a fundamentalist Islamic state stretching from Western China through Central Asia.

The ETIM’s tactics and strategic goals have earned the group international condemnation. The organization and related Uighur terrorist groups have been designated by the UN as one of the terrorist groups affiliated with the Taliban and al Qaeda. The US Treasury Department and the US Department of Homeland Security have also designated the ETIM a terrorist organization.

The Department of Defense has released unclassified documents produced at Gitmo for the 22 Uighurs. The documents were produced during the detainee’s hearings before their Combatant Status Review Tribunals (“CSRT”) and Administrative Review Boards (“ARB”) between 2004 and 2006. All 22 of the Uighurs are alleged to have demonstrable ties to the ETIM and/or its sister organization the Sharq (East) Turkistan Islamic Partiyisa (STIP). All of the detainees were either: (a) identified as members of the ETIM and STIP and/or (b) received training at ETIM facilities and/or (c) resided at ETIM guesthouses or training facilities.

While the detainees and their advocates claim that they were solely interested in attacking Chinese interests, it is important to note that there is evidence that the ETIM has already plotted anti-American terrorism. As the State Department has noted, “two ETIM members were deported to China from Kyrgyzstan for plotting to attack the US Embassy in Kyrgyzstan as well as other US interests abroad” in May of 2002.

20 of the 22 Uighurs detained at Gitmo were allegedly trained in an ETIM training camp and/or other facilities. At least 15 of the Uighurs detained at Gitmo have admitted that they received weapons training. The main training camp at which the Uighurs trained was reportedly sponsored by al Qaeda and the Taliban.

In the unclassified documents released by the DOD, 20 of 22 Uighurs were alleged to have received training in Afghanistan. The Uighurs allegedly trained on light arms, including how to breakdown or fire a Kalashnikov rifle. At least some of the detainees also allegedly received religious instruction, including how to read the Koran. The US government also alleges that one of the detainees was a weapons instructor from May through October of 2001.

In addition to examining the US government’s claims, The Long War Journal examined the detainees’ testimony. The DOD released transcripts of testimony for 19 of the 22 Uighur detainees. The detainees frequently denied the government’s allegations. Interestingly, however, 15 of the 19 Uighur detainees who testified admitted to receiving some form of training in Afghanistan. Most, if not all, of the detainees claimed they received the training in order to fight against the Chinese government.

The training took place primarily at the ETIM’s training camp in Tora Bora. A minimum of 15 detainees, out of the total 20 who received training, were trained at the ETIM’s Tora Bora facilities. There were also two instances in which detainees were allegedly trained to use small arms at ETIM guesthouses in Kabul and Kartisi, Afghanistan. The government’s files note that the Kabul guesthouse was “Taliban-sanctioned.” In one instance, a detainee was alleged to have “received training in an al Qaeda sponsored camp two hours North or Northwest of [Jalalabad], Afghanistan.” In a few instances, it is not entirely clear where in Afghanistan Uighur detainees received their training.

Throughout the unclassified Gitmo documents, the government alleges that the ETIM’s training camp at Tora Bora was sponsored by the Taliban and al Qaeda. The government claims the “training camp was provided to the Uighurs by the Taliban” and “funded by bin Laden and the Taliban.” One unclassified document explains the recruiting network that drew the Uighurs to Afghanistan more fully:

[The] ETIM, reportedly with financial support and direction from Osama bin Laden, recruits within remote areas of Eastern China and ships recruits to training camps in Afghanistan. These recruits then return to China to conduct terrorist activities and extend their influence. Training includes religious extremist theory, terrorism, explosives, and assassination. Some training camps also include the manufacturing of weapons, ammunitions, and explosive devices.

None of the 19 Uighur detainees admitted any connection between the Taliban, al Qaeda and the ETIM’s training facilities during their testimony before their tribunals or review boards. The Uighurs frequently denied any association with al Qaeda or the Taliban. As one of the Uighurs, Bahtiyar Mahnut, put it: “Al Qaeda…those people don’t care if we go or not or anything [about] people. They just destroy everything and we’re not crazy like those people. We’re not going to get along with those kind[s] of people… we have nothing to do with that.”

The Uighur detainees may very well not be aware of any link between the ETIM and al Qaeda. Or, they may be lying. But it is unlikely that the ETIM operated training camps inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan without, at the very least, the regime’s acquiescence. And as Gunaratna has pointed out previously, “al Qaeda and the [ETIM] have released a number of statements and videos where ETIM is training in al Qaeda camps with their instructors.” In a recent interview with The Long War Journal, Mr. Gunaratna pointed out that a small cadre of ETIM fighters had relocated to Federally Administered Tribal Areas of northern Pakistan. There, according to Gunaratna, they receive training from al Qaeda and al Qaeda-allied forces.

Some of the Uighur detainees are alleged to have fought in Afghanistan.

At least three of the Uighur detainees are alleged to have participated in hostilities in Afghanistan. The US government alleges that one of the Uighurs, Ahmad Tourson, “stated that he traveled to Konduz, AF and then on to Mazar-e-Sharif to fight against General Dostum's troops.” It is not clear when Tourson allegedly made this admission. During his CSRT hearing Tourson denied traveling to Mazar-e-Sharif to fight.

The battle for Mazar-e-Sharif began in the second week of November 2001. The Northern Alliance, backed by US airpower, quickly took hold of the city after a brief gunbattle with Taliban forces. The city is a major strategic point in Afghanistan, and it took the Taliban years to gain control of it. So when coalition forces approached in late 2001, the Taliban called in reinforcements from the many jihadist terrorist groups operating on Afghani soil. It is certainly plausible that Tourson was one of those who made their way to Mazar-e-Sharif in support of the Taliban’s operations. Although he denied traveling to Mazar-e-Sharif to fight, Tourson admitted that the Northern Alliance captured him there.

Most of the Uighur detainees were at Tora Bora during the US bombing campaign in late 2001 because they had been attending training classes there. Two of them are alleged to have “participated” in the battle of Tora Bora. The government alleges that Yusef Abbas “participated in the battle of Tora Bora” and “was wounded as a result of coalition bombing, and received medical treatment from the Taliban.” During his CSRT testimony, Abbas denied these allegations. “No, I didn't participate in any fighting,” Abbas claimed. He claimed that a fellow Uighur, and not the Taliban, attended to his wounds. Similarly, Uighur detainee Abdullah Abdulqadirakhun denied that he participated in the battle of Tora Bora.

The majority of the detainees are not alleged to have participated in fighting in Afghanistan. But this may be because they were, by and large, new recruits. Most the Uighur detainees traveled to Afghanistan in the months immediately preceding the September 11 attacks. In the aftermath of the American-led counterattack, many of the jihadist forces were left to scramble for refuge. In fact, most of the Uighur detainees were captured by Pakistani authorities after fleeing across the border, just as many hundreds of their Arab counterparts did.

The Uighur’s advocates maintain that they were solely focused on using their new skills against the Chinese. But ETIM recruits have fought alongside their fellow jihadists throughout central Asia. The ETIM has a particularly close relationship with another al Qaeda affiliate, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (“IMU”). And the IMU frequently filled al Qaeda’s and the Taliban’s ranks with willing fighters. It is at least possible, then, that the ETIM’s new recruits may have ended up on the battlefields of central Asia as opposed to western China.

At least several of the Uighur detainees have ties to the ETIM’s senior leadership, which is, in turn, tied to the senior leadership of al Qaeda.

A key figure in the nexus between the ETIM and al Qaeda is a deceased terrorist named Hassan Mahsum. Mahsum reportedly brokered the relationship between al Qaeda and the ETIM in the 1990’s. According to some reports, he even received $300,000 from Osama bin Laden directly. This claim may come from the Chinese government, which is not always the most reliable broker of information. However, the DOD’s unclassified files are replete with references to al Qaeda’s sponsorship of the ETIM. As the DOD alleged in one document:

“Mahsum aligned his organization with Osama Bin Laden (OBL) and it is now considered part of al Qaida. Since 2000, its core has been located at an al Qaida camp near Tora Bora. The fighters, under the authority of OBL, are considered a combat sub-unit of the Taliban.”

Former Indian intelligence officer B. Raman has explained the relationship between Mahsum’s ETIM and al Qaeda in similar terms. Raman has written that the ETIM “is a major component of the terrorist network headed by bin Laden” throughout South and Central Asia. Raman has further claimed:

“Hassan Mahsum, the ETIM ringleader, used to hide in Kabul and had an Afghan passport issued by the Taliban. Bin Laden asked the ETIM to stir up trouble in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and then stage an organized infiltration into Xinjiang. The ‘Turkistan Army’ under the ETIM fought along with the Taliban in Afghanistan. This ‘Army’ has a special ‘China Battalion’ with about 320 terrorists from Xinjiang. The battalion is under the direct command of Hassan Mahsum's deputy Kabar.”

Other experts agree with Raman that there was a definite relationship between Mahsum and al Qaeda. For example, Gunaratna has described the relationship between al Qaeda and the ETIM as “very strong.” In an interview earlier this year, Gunaratna explained:

Hassan Mahsum, the leader of ETIM, was killed in South Waziristan--the area that al Qaeda was operating in 2003--by the Pakistani forces. There have been a number of ETIM members arrested in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They are working very [closely] with Al-Qaeda. Abu [Zubaydah], the operations chief for Al-Qaeda, met with Uighur radical groups entering Pakistan. The relationship between the two is very strong.

The relationship between Mahsum and bin Laden is germane to the analysis of the Uighur detainees. Not only did Mahsum run the ETIM, to which all of the Uighur detainees have been tied, but he also had direct dealings with at least some of the Uighur detainees.

For example, according to the DOD, one Uighur named Nag Mohammed was “closely associated with” Mahsum. “In late September 2000,” the government claimed Mohammed “traveled from Turkistan, through Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan, to Kabul, Afghanistan for an Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) meeting.” The DOD did not release a transcript of Mohammed’s testimony, so it appears that he did not participate in either his CSRT or ARB hearings. And, therefore, we do not know his response to this allegation.

Another Uighur detainee named Abdullah Abdulqadirakhun admitted during his CSRT hearing that Mahsum personally trained him at the Tora Bora camp sometime between September and mid-October of 2001. Similarly, Uighur detainee Yusef Abbas claimed that Mahsum showed him how to use the Kalashnikov. Two others admitted to seeing or meeting Mahsum as well. Bahtiyar Mahnut admitted during his ARB testimony that Mahsum visited the Tora Bora camp while he was there and that he met the ETIM chieftain. Huzaifa Parhat also admitted he saw Mahsum at the Tora Bora camp. (Earlier this year, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided that Parhat had been wrongly labeled an “enemy combatant” at Gitmo.)

After Mahsum was killed in 2003, a terrorist named Abdul Haq assumed control of the organization. Haq and Mahsum had worked together for years, recruiting and training Uighurs in camps in Afghanistan.

Several of the Uighur Gitmo detainees admitted that Haq ran the Tora Bora camp. And there is evidence that at least some of the detainees were personally supervised by Abdul Haq. During his CSRT testimony Bahtiyar Mahnut explained, “The person running the camp [at Tora Bora] was named Abdul Haq, and he was a Uighur.”

“The first day I came to the camp, Abdul Haq told me that I had to give him my passport and whenever I wanted to leave I could ask for it back,” Mahnut elaborated. “He then took my passport from me.”

The practice Mahnut describes is common. New jihadist recruits typically turn in their passports when they arrive at guesthouses or training camps. This is al Qaeda’s standard modus operandi as well. The recruits are given new jihadist identities and their paperwork is kept for security reasons.

The Long War Journal’s review of the DOD’s unclassified documents demonstrates that a number of the Uighur detainees admitted ties to senior ETIM leaders Hassan Mahsum and Abdul Haq. This is a significant red flag because both men are committed jihadists with longstanding ties to al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the international jihadist network. That the Uighur detainees had dealings with these men is not surprising because most of them attended Mahsum’s and Haq’s training camp at Tora Bora.

The ETIM, and Abdul Haq, remain a threat.

The Uighur detainee’s ties to the ETIM’s senior leadership is particularly troubling given the ETIM’s and Abdul Haq’s continued operations. The ETIM has not been put out of business. Instead, it has evolved into possibly one or more organizations, with some members simply blending in with their fellow jihadists in northern Pakistan. The core of the ETIM remains focused on launching terrorist operations.

According to the State Department, Chinese authorities broke up an ETIM training camp in January of 2007. In the process, they killed 18 ETIM members and arrested 17 others. “According to police reports,” the State Department explained, “Chinese police seized hand grenades, unassembled explosives, detonators, and the equivalent of $38,705 dollars in cash.” This raid followed several other ETIM-related incidents in recent years.

Then, earlier this year, a group calling itself the Turkistan Islamic Party released a video threatening to target the Beijing Olympics. The organization behind the video is widely believed to be the ETIM, which simply adopted a new name. According to a translation of the video provided by Laura Mansfield, the ETIM spokesman on the video warned:

“This is our last warning to China and the rest of the world. The viewers and athletes, especially those who are Muslim, who plan to go to the Olympics should change their plans and not go to China. The Turkistan Islamic Party plans military attacks on people, offices, arenas, and other activities that are connected to the Chinese Olympic Games.”

The attacks did not happen. But the threats were serious enough to warrant stepped up security and at least some experts, like Gunaratna, considered the ETIM to be the “pre-eminent threat” to the Olympic Games. In addition, the ETIM spokesman also claimed credit for several other earlier attacks, including a series of bus bombings. These claims may have been hyped, but it is clear that the ETIM remains a viable force.

There is one last item worth noting. According to some accounts, the brain behind the threat made against the Olympic Games and the ETIM’s ongoing operations is Abdul Haq – the same man who once trained the Uighur detainees at Gitmo. Haq remains at large.

And if a US federal court gets its way, his trainees will soon be free men (presumably under surveillance) on American soil as well.

Pakistani Army rejects Waziristan operation (07:49PM)

With military operations underway in Swat and the tribal agency of Bajaur, the Pakistani Army moved to quell rumors of a pending operation in the Taliban stronghold of North Waziristan, according to reports from Pakistan. In South Waziristan, the Waziri tribes are calling for the government to abide by a peace deal.

Brigadier General Khushnood Iqbal Kiyani, the commander of the garrison in Mirali, sought to reassure the "Utmanzai tribal militants" after rumors spread that an operation would be launched in North Waziristan on Oct. 10. "He made it clear that the government would abide by its peace agreement, which it had signed with Utmanzai tribesmen on February 17," The News reported.

The rumored target of the operation was Hafiz Gul Bahadar, a senior Taliban leader in North Waziristan. Bahadar was one of the signatories of the Feb. 17 peace agreement that ended clashes in the region. He also signed the Sept. 2006 North Waziristan Accord, along with other senior Taliban leaders. Bahadar has opposed fighting the Pakistani military but sponsors al Qaeda camps and sends fighters into Afghanistan.

In neighboring South Waziristan, the Ahmedzai Wazir tribe sought to dissuade the government from launching an operation. Tribal leaders met with Taliban leader Mullah Nazir "to seek assurance for peace in the Wazir areas and he committed to maintain peace," Daily Times reported.

"I want peace, but the government appears uninterested in peace in the Wazir areas," Nazir told the tribal committee. "I will stick to the peace deal as long as the government does." Nazir refused to meet with government officials, but the tribal leaders said the government was interested in maintaining a dialog to stave off fighting.

Nazir is a rival of Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud. Nazir is often described as a "pro-government" Taliban leader as he does not advocate overthrowing the Pakistani government. He ejected Uzbeks from the al Qaeda-allied Islamic Jihad Union from the Wana region in 2007.

But Nazir openly supports al Qaeda and its leadership and admitted he would provide shelter to senior al Qaeda leaders. "How can I say no to any request from Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar under tribal traditions, if they approach me to get shelter?" Nazir asked the Pakistani press in the spring of 2007.

Arab al Qaeda operatives help finance Nazir’s operations. He also openly supports the continuation of the jihad in Afghanistan and vowed to provide fighters to support the Taliban.

Pakistan's tribal problems

The government's hesitance to move against the Taliban and al Qaeda camps in North and South Waziristan highlights the problems Pakistan faces with the tribes in the tribal areas and the Northwest Frontier Province. The Utmanzai Wazir tribe in North Waziristan and the Ahmedzai Wazir tribe in South Waziristan are firmly behind the Taliban, as the interactions with Bahadar, Nazir, Mehsud, the Haqqanis, and other Taliban leaders in the region shows.

While the government has had some success in getting tribes to oppose the Taliban in Bajaur, Swat, Khyber, Dir, and Buner, the tribes are being pealed off piecemeal. And the major tribes do not back the government's efforts to raise tribal lashkars, or militias, to drive out the Taliban and al Qaeda entrenched in the region.

"Most of the current resistance is centered around the Shia in Gilgit and Parachinar or among the Barelvi Muslims and Nuristani polytheists of the region," the source said. "The Deobandi Pashtuns from the Ghilzai and Yusufzai tribal confederations that make up the bedrock of Taliban and al Qaeda support in the FATA/NWFP (Federally Administered Tribal Agencies/Northwest Frontier Province) and southern Afghanistan" do not support the tribal uprising and back the Taliban.

"Tribal engagements work both ways," a senior US military intelligence source familiar with Pakistan’s tribes told The Long War Journal on the condition of anonymity. "The Taliban can manipulate the tribes to their advantage, and do. They’ve been at this a long time and have real support."

"Tehrik-e-Taliban (the movement of the Taliban in Pakistan) and al Qaeda have been endorsed by the overwhelming majority of the leadership of the Khattak, Wazir, Bhittani, Mehsud, Banuchi, Orakzai, and Niazi tribes that conservatively number in the hundreds of thousands," the source stated. "While the Pakistani state has endorsed the lashkars, none of the leading maliks or khans have, making it very difficult for the lashkars to gain the local legitimacy that they require to champion the necessary resistance."

The source also noted that the current rumors that NATO is willing to negotiate with the Taliban in Afghanistan is undermining the effort to court tribes in Pakistan. "Assuming that you are a khan or malik in the FATA or NWFP, are you going to risk your neck to oppose the Taliban or play it safe and wait to see who ends up on top?"

Related:

• Taliban have not split from al Qaeda: sources
Oct. 7, 2008
• Pakistan engages the tribes in effort to fight the Taliban
Sept. 29, 2008

Taliban have not split from al Qaeda: sources (10:50AM)

The Taliban have not broken ranks with al Qaeda, senior US military and intelligence sources told The Long War Journal. The idea that the Taliban has severed relations is promoted by European countries who wish to back out of Afghanistan after years of bloody fighting, the sources, who wish to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the subject, said.

The reports of a split between al Qaeda and the Taliban originated with CNN after sources claimed senior Taliban leaders were in Saudi Arabia to meet with King Abdullah and several members of the Afghan government.

But sources familiar with al Qaeda and the Taliban in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region told The Long War Journal there is no evidence of a split, and the members of the so-called Taliban delegation have no influence with the senior Taliban leadership.

"There are no indications that Mullah Omar or anyone part of the Taliban's Shura Majlis (or executive council) cut their ties with Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda," one senior source said. "If there is a denunciation or discussion of a break with al Qaeda, I do not see it."

Several members of the Afghan Taliban still serve on al Qaeda's executive leadership council, and there are no indications anyone has been expelled.

"Omar sacrificed his country and his throne to protect Osama" by opposing the US in the run-up to the US invasion in 2001, a source said. "Why, after the Taliban is in ascendancy in Afghanistan in Pakistan, would they abandon al Qaeda now?"

Negotiators are Taliban outsiders

The press reports have focused on the members of the so-called Taliban peace negotiators, but have failed to review at who exactly is participating in the talks. A look at the Afghans involved shows these are men who have fallen out of favor with the Taliban high command.

"There were no senior leaders of the Taliban present in Saudi Arabia," one senior source told The Long War Journal. "Not one member of the Taliban Shura Majlis. Not even one senior Taliban official in good standing with the leadership."

"They are all outsiders," the source reiterated.

Included in the Taliban negotiating team are Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, and Mullah Mohamed Tayeb Agha, according to a report in Asharq al Awsat.

Mutawakil, who served as the Taliban's foreign minister in 2001, has long fallen out of favor with the Taliban, according to sources as well as reports in the press. "He has no authority among the Taliban leaders who matter," said one senior source.

The BBC describes Mutawakil as "the more respectable face of the Taliban" as he is considered as "articulate and relatively moderate." He is "several rungs of power removed from the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar." and broke ranks after Omar refused to hand over Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 attacks. In 2002 he claimed he was sent to warn the US of the Sept. 11 attacks but was ignored.

Mutawakil surrendered to the US in February 2002 without seeking approval from the senior Taliban leadership. He was detained by the US and then placed under house arrest in Kabul. The Taliban ejected Mutawakil from the movement in 2003, saying he "does not represent our will". Mutawakil contested the elections in 2005.

Mutawakil has been behind numerous failed attempts to promote reconciliation between the Afghan government and the Taliban. "He is probably sincere but just completely powerless," a source told The Long War Journal.

Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, another purported representative of the Taliban in the Saudi Arabia negotiations, served as the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan. He was detained by the Pakistani security services in 2002 and sent to the Guantanamo Detention Facility in Cuba before he was released in 2006.

Zaeef is also seen as a "moderate" Taliban and was considered a candidate to join the interim Afghan government. "Zaeef has no standing with the current Taliban leadership," a source said.

Mullah Mohamed Tayeb Agha was also in attendance in Saudi Arabia. While Agha is described as "the spokesman for Taliban leader Mullah Omar," he hasn't held this role for a decade. "That was back in the 1990s," a source familiar with the Taliban leadership said.

The Taliban reject peace talks

Mullah Omar and the Taliban have openly rejected the idea their followers are in negotiations with the Afghan government. Omar and the Taliban issued two press releases since Sept. 28 to quell the rumors.

The first statement, issued by the Taliban on Sept 28, rejected any idea of a peace agreement. "The Shura Council of the Islamic Emriate of Afghanistan considers such baseless rumors as part of the failed efforts by our enemies to create distrust and doubts among Afghans, other nations, and the mujahideed," the statement read. "No official member of the Taliban--now or in the past--has ever negotiated with the US or the puppet Afghan government."

The Taliban then went out of its way to denounce those negotiating under its banner, and clearly referred to Mutawakil, Zaeef, and Agha. "A handful of former Taliban officials who are under house arrest or who have surrendered do not represent the Islamic Emirate."

The Taliban then clearly lay out their strategy to retake power in Afghanistan. The statement is clear they do not seek accommodation, but the removal of NATO troops and the ouster of the Karzai regime. "If out fight was for control of ministries and other prominent positions in the puppet administration, then such negotiations would make sense--but this is not the case," the statement read. "Our struggle is to implement the rules of Allah in Afghanistan by eradicating the enemies of Islam... Our struggle will continue until the departure of all foreign troops."

In a statement signed by Mullah Omar on Sept. 30, he was clear that he believed the Taliban was close to victory and offered the US harsh terms for peace. "If you demonstrate an intention of withdrawing your forces, we once again will demonstrate our principles by giving you the right of safe passage, in order to show that we never harm anyone maliciously," Omar said. He also went out of his way to praise the mujahideen, both Afghan and foreign, in their willingness to take the fight to the West.

Europe looking for an out

The eagerness to promote reconciliation between the Taliban and the Afghan government stems from European governments looking to extract themselves from the Afghan conflict, senior sources tell The Long War Journal.
 
The reports of the Saudi Arabian negotiations arose after a senior British general said victory in Afghanistan was impossible and the West should dumb down expectations on the outcome of the conflict. A British and a UN diplomat described Afghanistan as "lost." Other European officials have been keen on opening direct negotiations with the Taliban.

US intelligence and military officials are furious over the latest attempts to conduct “misguided” negotiations. "These are the people that brought you Musa Qala and the debacle in Basrah," one senior source said angrily. The source was referring to the Brit's turning over of the district of Musa Qala in Helmand province to the Taliban in 2006 and the Brit's ceding the Iraqi city of Basrah to the Mahdi Army while claiming victory in 2007. The Brits claimed Basrah was a success story and began withdrawing troops as the city fell under the spell of Iranian-backed militias.

Musa Qala had to be retaken in a bloody offensive a year later in 2007. The Iraqi Army launched an offensive six months later to retake Basrah from the Mahdi Army in the spring of 2008.

"These two events were debacles," the source said. "Why should we trust them with current peace talks, particularly when they have no idea who they are negotiating with?"

"We had to clean up their mess twice," another source said, again referring to Musa Qala and Basrah and fearing the negotiations would be taken seriously by Washington. "At this point, it would be better if they left Afghanistan," the source said, frustrated with the lack of unity of command in Afghanistan and the failure of the West to present a unified front against the Taliban and allied groups.

Taliban rebuild children’s suicide camp in South Waziristan (05:36PM)

Scores of children train to become suicide bombers at a camp run by Qair Hussain in Spinkai, South Waziristan. Image courtesy of AfPax Insider.

The Taliban have rebuilt a camp in South Waziristan that trains children to be suicide bombers, a video from Pakistan shows. Children as young as seven years old are indoctrinated to wage jihad in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The video, obtained by AfPax Insider, was shot in August in Spinkai Ragzai, South Waziristan, a tribal area run by Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. The Taliban are seen "training dozens of boys ranging in age from seven to 14," the news service reported. "The video attempts to justify suicide bombings as a legitimate means of attack against "infidels.'"

The images shows the children reading from the Quran and an adult Taliban training the children. One slide shows a poster board with the words “Killing a Spy” written in English.

While not explicitly stated in the AfPax Insider report, the camp is run by Qari Hussain, a senior lieutenant to Baitullah who has close links to al Qaeda. Hussain has rebuilt his child training camp after the Pakistani military demolished his suicide nursery during a short offensive in Spinkai in January 2008.

In May, a senior Pakistani general described the previous camp as a "factory." The military seized numerous documents and training materials in the demolished camp.

"It was like a factory that had been recruiting nine to 12-year-old boys, and turning them into suicide bombers," said Major General Tariq Khan, the commander of Pakistan's 14 Division, which led the operation in South Waziristan.

"The computers, other equipment and literature seized from the place ... give graphic details of the training process in this so-called ‘nursery,’" Dawn reported in May. "There are videos of young boys carrying out executions, a classroom where 10- to 12-year olds are sitting in formations, with white band of Quranic verses wrapped around their forehead, and there are training videos to show how improvised explosive devices are made and detonated."

The Pakistani military launched the operation in South Waziristan on Jan. 24 after Taliban forces commanded by Baitullah overran two military outposts and conducted attacks against other forts and military convoys in the tribal agency.

The Pakistani military reported that Hussain was killed in January after intercepting Taliban communications. The military later reiterated that claim during the tour of the Spinkai camp on May 18.

Hussain held a press conference at a government school building in South Waziristan five days later. During the interview,he mocked the reports of his death. “I am alive, don’t you see me?” Hussain said.

Hussain is believe to be in the running to succeed Baitullah Mehsud in the event of his death. Baitullah is suffering from complications related to kidney disease and was rumored to have died last week. Baitullah was later seen visiting villagers to celebrate Eid in towns throughout South Waziristan.

The Spinkai camp is one of 157 training camps and more than 400 support locations in the Taliban-controled tribal areas and in the Northwest Frontier Province.