Monday 5 September 2011

Let's make up and be friends

Younis al-Mauritani
Pakistan's Inter Services Public Relations announced today the capture of three al-Qaeda members from the suburbs of Quetta, capital of Baluchistan and home to the Taliban's Quetta Shura leadership council. The most senior was Younis al-Mauritani, described in the ISPR press release as being "mainly responsible for planning and conduct of international operations", adding that he had been "personally tasked by Osama bin Laden to focus on hitting targets of economical importance in United States of America, Europe and Australia."
It said he was planning to target US economic interests including gas/oil pipelines, power generating dams and strike ships or oil tankers by using explosive-laden speed boats in international waters.
Some background on al-Mauritani can be found in this article, coincidentally published in today's edition of Spiegel Online.
ISPR also mentioned that the operation to arrest al-Mauritani - along with Abdul Ghaffar al-Shami (aka Bachar Chama) and Messara al-Shami (Mujahid Amino) - was "planned and conducted with technical assistance of United States intelligence agencies with whom Inter Services Intelligence has a strong, historic intelligence relationship".
True, but in recent months that relationship has been in tatters and is still an open wound. Giving the Pakistanis live information on important al-Qaeda suspects and allowing them to make all the running in the arrests would be a nice gesture, just to show that there are no hard feelings. Wouldn't it?

1 comment:

davidbfpo said...

Unless of course ISI knew where they were and a policy decision was taken to arrest them. Given the "revolving door" practice in the past "making up" maybe generous.