ISLAMABAD, 22 March 2004 — Most of the 500 militants trapped in an army siege in Pakistan’s northwest tribal zone are Uzbek and Chechen fighters who seem more intent on protecting their own leaders rather than a high profile Al-Qaeda target, regional experts said yesterday.
“We’re very doubtful about the presence of any big-wig,” a Western intelligence official told AFP, adding to growing doubts that fighters were protecting a senior Al-Qaeda leader near Wana in the remote tribal district of South Waziristan.
Some officials believed the level of resistance indicated the target was Al-Qaeda No. 2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri.
But as Pakistan’s biggest-ever offensive against the determined fighters pushed forward for a fourth day, radio intercepts and the arrests of scores of Central Asians indicated the leader was more likely one of the Uzbek or Chechen militants believed to be hiding in the area.
Uzbek militants who fled Afghanistan after fighting alongside Al-Qaeda and the Taleban were stranded in northwest Pakistan’s tribal belt and have picked up work as laborers, married local women, and settled.
“The majority of those besieged by Pakistani troops are Uzbeks. They fled into Pakistan after the fall of Taleban in 2001,” said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Peshawar-based journalist and specialist in Afghan and tribal affairs.
The Uzbeks were followers of Tahir Yuldesh and his outlawed Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, he said. They were sheltered by conservative ethnic Pashtun tribes.
Yuldesh is locally known as Abu Tahir and has long been suspected to be hiding in Azam Warzak near Wana, the capital of South Waziristan, near the scene of the biggest ever clashes between Pakistani forces and Al-Qaeda suspects.
“Tahir Yuldesh came to Afghanistan after an attack on the life of President Karimov in Tashkent,” Yusufzai said. “But there seems to be no direct link between him and the Al-Qaeda leadership.”
The other group of suspected militants in the area came from the war-torn Russian republic of Chechnya.
A Chechen rebel commander identified as Danyar was among a group who crossed into the tribal belt after the Taleban’s ouster in late 2001, Yusufzai said.
“I think the high-value target is an Uzbek or Chechen leader but certainly not a top Al-Qaeda leader,” he said.
“These Uzbeks and Chechens are not directly linked to Al-Qaeda. They may have some indirect association only. They have their own priorities.”
Yusufzai said there were very few Arabs in the area. Western intelligence experts were equally skeptical.
“We think it’s more of a ‘pool’ of die-hard Al-Qaeda, Afghan mujahedeen and local tribes,” the intelligence officer said.
“Our information tends to show that most of the important people had already managed to go to the other side of the border several days or weeks ago.”
The area under siege is dominated by the Yargulkhel clan, part of the Zalikhel sub-tribe of Ahmedzai tribes of ethnic Pashtuns who live on both sides of the porous frontier.
The Yargulkhels are the chief supporters of Al-Qaeda and other militants around Wana, local military commander Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain told reporters Saturday.
“The Yargulkhels do not have a very big concentration but they are well armed and equipped with heavy weaponry,” Yusufzai said.
Powerful tribal elders with die-hard loyalist fighters may also be among those trapped in the siege.
Local elder Nek Mohammad of the Waziri tribe, who tops a list of tribal chiefs wanted for protecting Al-Qaeda and other foreign militants, was seen in one of three landcruisers fleeing the first raid on Tuesday, Hussain said.
Each house in this remote northwest frontier tribal district is a fortress which Pakistani soldiers must conquer one by one in their desperate bid to wipe out the militant fighters.
Flanked by valleys and mountains where brittle scrub pushes through the sun-baked earth, the combat zone encircled by Pakistani troops is made up largely of two villages, Shin Warsak and Kalusha, about a dozen kilometers (eight miles) southwest of the district capital Wana, a dusty market town where soldiers outnumber civilians.
Afghanistan lies just 15 kilometers (nine miles) to the west along a chain of barren cave-pocked mountains rising above 2,000 meters (6,700 feet).
The frontier is unmarked and ignored day to day by proud Pashtun tribes who live on either side of the border and fiercely guard their autonomy.
