al Qaeda-Taliban Combo Has Chemical Weapon Formula

The al-Qaida-Taliban combo plans to use parts of the Middle East as launch pads for attacks against the west. Not only so, the groups

have also developed some expertise in making bio-chemical weapons, NWFP police chief Malik Navid told a Pakistan National Assembly’s standing committee.

Navid warned that the Pakistan government needed to urgently focus on containing militancy as it spread from its bases. “Taliban’s philosophy is to create pockets everywhere,” he said, adding that jihadi groups were moving through southern Punjab and eventually aimed to reach the financial hub of Karachi.

The frank assessment of the police official serves to confirm concerns about whether Pakistan and its military complex in particular was prepared to clearly acknowledge the threat posed by jihadists given the army and ISI see Taliban as allies in ensuring a “friendly” dispensation in Afghanistan while also feeding the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir. The army’s sporadic efforts to roll back jihadis lacked conviction and have predictably shown poor results.

Navid’s testimony also points to the virtual merger of al-Qaida with Taliban, with the latter being both part of the core and the major striking arm. Indian intelligence assessments see anti-India groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba being very much a part of this conglomerate.

via ‘Qaida-Taliban combo has chemical weapon formula’ – South Asia – World – The Times of India.

Pakistani Official: Mumbai Attack Mastermind Captured

A suspected mastermind of last month’s deadly terror attack on Mumbai was arrested by Pakistani security forces in a raid on a militant camp, an official said on Monday.

Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi was among four men taken into custody following Sunday’s raid on a camp used by Lashkar-e-Taiba fighters outside Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir.

Security forces had raided the camp used by militants blamed for the Mumbai attacks and arrested more than a dozen people in Pakistan’s first known response to the assault.

U.S. and Indian suspicions that Pakistan-based militants carried out and plotted the attacks have sharply raised tensions between South Asia’s only nuclear-armed nations.

New Delhi says the Mumbai siege was carried out and plotted by militants belonging to Laskhar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani group accused of other attacks on Indian soil.

The New York Times, citing unidentified American intelligence and counterterrorism officials, reported in a story published Monday that Lashkar has gained strength in recent years with the help of Pakistan’s spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence.

The officials cited by the Times say the ISI has shared intelligence to and provided protection for the outlawed group, though there is no evidence to link the spy service to the Mumbai attacks.

Islamabad’s young civilian government has denied any of its state agencies were involved in the Mumbai attacks, but said it was possible that the militants were Pakistanis. It has pledged to cooperate with India, noting it too is a victim of terrorism.

Source