DUBAI: American Al-Qaeda militant Adam Gadahn described Pakistan’s new leaders as US puppets in a war against militants, in an Internet video posted yesterday.
“The Pakistan Army ... and the professional spreaders of lies at their service are trying to make us believe that the state of Pakistan has turned a new leaf (after US-allied former President Pervez Musharraf left power),” Gadahn said in the video posted on Islamist websites.
“These are not the leaders Pakistan wants and deserves. They are the leaders America wants and preserves in order to reach its policy objectives, hinder the jihad against the Crusaders in Afghanistan ... and ensure that nuclear-capable Pakistan remains docile, contained and Shariah-free,” Gadahn said.
“Their battle has always been and remains to be America’s battle, not Pakistan’s. And this battle (against militants) is what has brought Pakistan to the verge of break-up,” said Gadahn, also known as Azzam the American.
Gadahn, born Adam Pearlman, is a California-born convert to Islam and the first American to be charged with treason since the World War II era. He is believed to be in Pakistan.
Faced with an intensifying Taleban insurgency in Afghanistan, US forces in the past month have carried out missile strikes with pilotless drones and a commando raid on the Pakistani side of the border.
The raids have strained relations between the allies. The Pakistani government has protested that the attacks violated territorial sovereignty and undermined its own long-term efforts to crush militancy in a country where anti-American sentiment runs high.
But Gadahn dismissed Pakistan’s protests as a “cynical public relations ploy.” Gadahn has made a number of videotaped messages on behalf of Al-Qaeda.
In January, he urged militants to welcome President George W. Bush with bombs when he visited the Middle East and tore up his US passport on camera. Security analysts had speculated in recent months that Gadahn may have been killed in a US airstrike.
Meanwhile, Pakistani villagers collected the corpses and body parts yesterday of at least 20 people, including several suspected “Arab” militants as well as three children, killed by a US missile strike overnight.
A pilotless drone aircraft launched the attack late on Friday, targeting a tribesman’s house in Mohammad Khel, a village, 30 km west of Miranshah in North Waziristan, a known sanctuary of Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants close to the Afghan border.
Villagers combed the wreckage at daybreak, looking for survivors and bodies to be buried. “We found body parts scattered all over the place in the ruins, someone’s hand, someone’s leg,” Bakht Ali, one of the villagers, told Reuters. An intelligence official based in the region said a woman and three children were among those killed.
“We now have a figure of 20 dead. That includes eight residents of the house, five other locals and seven foreigners,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
The foreigners appeared to be Arabs, although their nationalities were unknown, he said. There were no indications that any of those killed were regarded by US counterterrorism agencies as top tier Al-Qaeda targets, sources said.
The News newspaper reported that the strike was carried out based on information that the foreigners had been invited to a feast by pro-Taleban tribesmen following the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
The Pakistan Army is currently fighting fierce battles against militants in Bajaur, at the northeast extreme of the tribal belt, and Swat, an alpine valley in a more settled region close to the tribal lands.
In some places, ethnic Pashtun tribesmen have banded together with encouragement from the authorities to oppose the militants, whom the tribes blame for bringing violence to their region.
A traditional meeting or “Jirga” of tribal elders in Mamound, a militant stronghold in Bajaur, decided yesterday to form a “Lashkar” or a tribal force to initiate action against militants in their area, a resident said.
