KARACHI, 4 April 2004 — Most Arab Al-Qaeda terrorists fled Wana before the military operation began, buying their exit, highly placed sources told Arab News.
Officials said two low-ranking intelligence officers were taken into custody on suspicion of helping Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri escape.
The sources also said that Shakai village near Wana would be the next target of a military operation for reportedly sheltering Al-Qaeda, Taleban and rebel tribal leaders.
Hundreds of Al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan after heavy bombardment by US coalition forces of their main hideouts in Tora Bora. Around 1,600 with their families are reported to have arrived in groups. One group stayed in Noshera, another in Dera Ismail Khan and a third at the Jalaludin Haqani seminary in Miran Shah. American Taleban John Walker and around 50 British, European and American Al-Qaeda terrorists were among them. Two of the groups were led by Taleban commanders Malik Janan and Sheraz.
According to the sources, the Arabs who had the money settled in these areas, sending their families, especially women and children, to their countries of origin through agents.
The agents from the tribal areas smuggled them out for $2,000 per person. The sources said terrorists from China, Chechnya, Tajikistan and other central Asian states and Arabs preferred to stay in the tribal areas also because local tribes sheltered them, albeit for $100 to 300 a week.
The Arabs settled in Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad, Kashmir and other parts of Pakistan while the Uzbeks, Chechens and Chinese stayed in the tribal areas and paid up to $300 a week. The tribes cooperated with the fighters in sympathy as well as for money. However, not all tribes cooperated with them. When a group of 120 Al-Qaeda fighters entered Khurram Agency from Tora Bora, the Mangial tribe disarmed, robbed and detained them. They were later freed after paying ransom.
Chinese fighters did not have enough money and most of the foreigners killed in the operation were from this group, the sources said.
The sources said a few Arab families were living in the area before the Tora Bora bombings, but they had no direct links with Al-Qaeda. “There are settlers in tribal areas on both sides of the Durand Line doing charity work, the sources said, but the United States has stopped differentiating between Al-Qaeda fighters and these Arabs after 9/11.
The Arab and Uzbek fighters had also told the tribal jirga that they were ready to go to the militants’ hideouts in South Waziristan to negotiate the release of 14 Pakistani paramilitary soldiers and government officers on March 26 and that they were prepared to surrender if the United Nations guaranteed that they would not be handed over to US forces, sources from Wana said. But the Pakistan Army rejected the offer. Pakistani officials believed this to be an Al-Qaeda trap and they knew the United Nations would not get involved in the operation.
Initially, Islamabad did not have enough information about Al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters to take serious notice of them because Pakistani intelligence agencies did not have an adequate network of ground intelligence in these areas and depended mostly on their agents in the field. But American intelligence had up-to-date reports from its own sources in the tribes and from Afghanistan that said Al-Qaeda fighters were gathering in these areas.
