WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 (UPI) -- Pakistan detained five more terror suspects Tuesday, but officials said they fear al-Qaida militants may launch retaliatory attacks to avenge the government's crackdown.
The arrests, in a middle-class neighborhood in the troubled Sindh province, are the latest in a series of detentions that began early July.
So far Pakistani security agencies have netted more than 20 al-Qaida suspects, including Ahmad Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian allegedly involved in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa. The bombings killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.
The arrests last week of two key al-Qaida leaders worry Pakistani security officials the most. Qari Saifullah Akhtar was brought home Saturday from the Persian Gulf state of Dubai, handcuffed like a common criminal. Maulana Fazalur Rehman Khalil was caught inside Pakistan following a U.S. complaint that he was still recruiting and sending volunteers for the Taliban movement in neighboring Afghanistan.
"They are the heroes of younger jihadis and they are going to retaliate," said Saleem Shahzad, bureau chief of the Hong Kong-based Asia Times who has reported on terror groups operating in the South Asian region.
"My contacts in the Pakistani intelligence community are bracing themselves for retaliatory attacks," he said.
A senior operative for the disbanded Lashkar-e-Tayyaba militant group, when contacted by the United Press International in the central Pakistani city of Lahore, confirmed these fears.
"We no longer live in an independent country. Pakistan now is an American colony. Our government simply implements the orders it receives from Washington," said the LeT operative who asked not to be identified.
The feeling is so widespread that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had to clarify his position. "I do not take dictations from America. It is insulting to say that I do. I would rather resign and go home than take orders," said Musharraf in an interview published Wednesday in Pakistan's largest newspaper group, the Jang. His remarks were broadcast repeatedly throughout the day by Pakistani television and radio channels.
The Pakistani government had hoped such assurances would soften the militants, but Pakistani intelligence sources who spoke to UPI said they do not believe such statements would have a major impact on the militants.
Qazi Hussain Ahmad, who leads the country's largest religious party, Jamaat-e-Islami, reacted cautiously to Musharraf's interview. "It is good if he says so but we will have to wait and see."
Explaining why Musharraf had to publicly proclaim his independence from Washington, Pakistani intelligence officials pointed to their estimates of 35,000 battle-hardened militants in Pakistan. Most of these militants were trained at camps in neighboring Afghanistan and returned home after the collapse of the Taliban regime in late 2001.
Pakistani observers say that since Pakistani agencies helped establish most of these militant groups -- first to fight the Soviet forces in Afghanistan and later to fight Indian troops in the disputed Kashmir region -- they know how much trouble the groups can create for them.
Pakistani intelligence sources who spoke to UPI said that the militants are experts at launching hit-and-run attacks, trained especially in making explosives from materials available in the market.
"They can make explosives from household detergents and timers used for washing machines," said one Pakistani intelligence official.
But what worries Pakistani security agencies even more is the militants' ability to melt away in society after launching a strike. They say that many of them demonstrated their resilience in Kashmir, a region disputed between India and Pakistan since 1947, while fighting Indian troops.
Despite having hundreds of thousands of troops in the Kashmir Valley, India was unable to control the militants until recently when a peace agreement distanced the government from the militants, forcing many to discontinue their activities.
Luckily for Pakistan, only a tiny fraction of the militants, not more than a few hundred, joined extremist groups functioning inside the country after they returned from Afghanistan and Kashmir. Most of them returned to their families and resumed what they were doing before joining organizations to fight.
"But the arrest of Akhtar and Khalil can change that," warned Shahzad while referring to the two militant leaders arrested last week. "The younger jihadis believe that the two leaders have served Pakistan and Islam in fighting the Indians and they may react violently to their detention."
Pakistani intelligence officials also acknowledge that the two leaders have the capability of contacting and mobilizing their followers even from the jail.
They point out that Akhtar was so prominent in the Taliban movement that the Taliban had put him in charge of the regime's police and later he also led Taliban fighters against the Northern Alliance. Akhtar lost 150 of his fighters in the war against the Americans in late 2001.
But despite his prominence, he was able to leave Afghanistan after the collapse of the Taliban regime and escape to Saudi Arabia and then to Dubai where he was traced last week with U.S. assistance.
He also had links within the Pakistani establishment, and in 1995, Akhtar tried to bring about an Islamist revolution in Pakistan with the help of some senior military officials led by Brig. Mustansar Billah. They were all arrested and sent to jail for seven years. While the military officials served their terms, Akhtar somehow got released and went to Afghanistan where he established several training camps for his group.
Khalil is more of an ideologue and allegedly enjoyed a close personal relationship with al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden who sent him to Pakistan to preach his militant views.
An ethnic Pashtun from an area bordering Afghanistan, Khalil studied at a religious seminary -- Jamia Numania -- in the D.I. Khan district. In 1979, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he joined the Yunus Khalis group of the Afghan Mujahedin. Like Akhtar, Khalil also established himself as a courageous fighter during the war against the Soviets and when their troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, he returned to Pakistan.
In June 1993, Khalil allegedly formed a militant group -- Harkatul Ansar -- with Akhtar but later the two split and Khalil is said to have formed another group called Harkatul Mujahedin.
Under the Taliban, he established two training camps -- Khalid bin Walid and Moawia -- in Afghanistan's Khowst province. Both camps were destroyed when U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf launched cruise missiles at Taliban and al-Qaida targets in Afghanistan following the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa.
Khalid, allegedly bent on revenge for the deaths of dozens of his followers in the cruise attacks, vowed retaliatory attacks on U.S. targets. In 2000, the U.S. State Department declared his group a terrorist outfit.
In October 2001, Khalil returned to Pakistan and in 2002 he was arrested following a militant attack on a Christian mission school in Murree, a hill resort near Islamabad. However, he was later released.
His arrest has angered the militants many of whom respect him for his "deep religious knowledge" and "his power to explain even the most difficult religious issues," as one of them said.
"He was living peacefully in Islamabad and had kept a low profile after the Sept. 11 (terrorist attacks)" in the United States, said the LeT operative interviewed by UPI.
He claimed that the United States had wanted him for sometime and finally Pakistan "gave in under U.S. pressure."
