ISLAMABAD, 27 April 2004 — Pakistan yesterday insisted it was still pursuing the war on terrorism, after an apparent retreat in its bid to capture hundreds of Al-Qaeda-linked fighters and their tribal protectors.
“Two facts have to be considered: One, there has been reconciliation through mutual consultations, and second that the war against terrorism will continue,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan told a weekly news briefing.
“There is no dilution in Pakistan’s commitment to fight terrorism.”
Pakistan on Saturday granted amnesty to the five chief militant tribesmen who have been protecting, supporting and fighting alongside at least 400 mainly Chechen and Uzbek Al-Qaeda-linked fighters.
The deal was brokered to avoid a repeat of the bloody 12-day confrontation in March between government forces and tribal fighters harboring the foreign and local extremists, but some Pakistani newspapers questioned whether it amounted to a surrender by the military.
“This smacks of a reversal for the government,” the Daily Times said in an editorial titled “Who has surrendered?”
The rebel tribesmen, led by former Taleban commander Nek Mohammad from the defiant Pashtun sub-tribe of Yargul Khels, were the target of the Pakistani Army’s largest-ever operation in the tribal areas last month.
The fighters they have been harboring are believed to be involved in deadly cross-border attacks on aid workers, troops and government targets in Afghanistan.
US commanders leading 15,500 troops in a hunt for Al-Qaeda and Taleban remnants were unhappy with the deal, according to diplomats in Islamabad.
Pakistan is one of Washington’s pivotal allies in the campaign to kill or capture Al-Qaeda fighters. It has captured more than 500 Al-Qaeda suspects since US-led forces invaded Afghanistan to smash the network’s Taleban hosts in late 2001.
Most have been handed over to US custody and wound up in the US naval prison on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
President Pervez Musharraf estimated early March that up to 600 Al-Qaeda fighters were hiding along Pakistan’s tribal-dominated northwest frontier, a remote and deeply conservative region where Osama Bin Laden is believed to have taken shelter.
