Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

1 Frontline Pakistan
house in Faisal colony, a middle-class neighbourhood in Faisalabad,
one of Pakistan’s largest industrial towns. Before the half-asleep
inhabitants could realize what was happening, soldiers had swept in,
breaking the main door and smashing the windows. Some of the men
inside tried to reach for their weapons, but it was too late for any
resistance. Those who tried to escape through the broken windows
were shot by FBI agents. One died on the spot, another was hit in the
groin and chest. The operation had been organized and conducted
by the FBI and the CIA, which had been given a free hand by the
Pakistani military government.
The lightning raid was conducted after electronic surveillance by
American agents detected satellite phone calls from Afghanistan which
pinpointed the location of one of al-Qaeda’s two top operatives. 20
The Americans kept the information top secret and only President
Musharraf and ISI chief, Lt.-General Ehsan ul-Haq, were kept in the
picture. 21 After a thorough check, the agents finally established the
identity of the wounded man lying on the floor in a pool of blood. He
was the man they wanted to catch: Abu Zubaydah.
His face covered with a towel, Abu Zubaydah was placed in an
armoured vehicle and driven immediately to a waiting plane. Once
his condition stabilized, he was flown to US military headquarters at
Bagram in Afghanistan for interrogation. 22 That night, the operation in
Faisalabad and subsequent raids in the central Punjab city of Lahore
netted more than 60 suspected terrorists, including 29 foreigners, mostly
Arabs and Afghans. Among them were 13 Yemenis, three Palestinians,
three Libyans and two Saudis. 23 That was the first major success in the
hunt for al-Qaeda operatives who had fled from Afghanistan.
Abu Zubaydah, also known as Zayn al-Abidin Mohammed Husyan,
had long been considered a key member of al-Qaeda’s inner circle.
Since the death of the al-Qaeda commander of military operations,
Mohammed Atef, in a bomb attack in Afghanistan, he had moved up the
organization’s hierarchy. Abu Zubaydah had been an elusive suspect.
Few photographs of him existed, he had used at least 37 aliases and
was considered a master of disguise. Born to Palestinian parents in
Saudi Arabia in 1971, Abu Zubaydah grew up in a Palestinian refugee
camp in the Gaza strip, where he was active in Hamas, before he
was recruited by al-Zawahiri’s Islamic Jihad. He had a long history
of involvement with the al-Qaeda. In 1999, a Jordanian military court
sentenced him to death in absentia, for plotting to attack tourist sites
in Jordan. 24