I don’t know how much weight I put in this report but if it is true, this demonstrates how the U.S. stands with the new government of Pakistan. Musharraf never allowed this kind of operation when he was in charge.
Terrorism: Bin Laden in Pakistan’s K2 mountains, says report
Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden is hiding in the K2 mountains of northern Pakistan, according to sources cited by Arabic television network, Al-Arabiya.
The report also said US secret services were intending to drive him out in a major military operation encompassing the northern Pakistani tribal areas.
According to the Dubai-based network, in the past few days US security and military officials had a top-level summit at a military base in the Qatari capital, Doha, to plan an operation to hunt for the al-Qaeda leader.
General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq and the US ambassador to Islamabad, Anne Petersen, were reported to have attended the summit.
Last week Petraeus testified before a US Congressional committee about security in Iraq and warned that members of al-Qaeda based in Pakistan’s tribal areas were planning a new September 11 attack.
Reports say that the CIA has located the Saudi terrorist in so-called “rooftop of the world”, the area of Pakistan that borders Afghanistan to the west, in particular the chain of mountains of Nurestan and China to the north.
There are fears that Bin Laden is planning new attacks on the west using Arabs but also Europeans who have converted to Islam.
Meanwhile support for al-Qaeda is reportedly broadening, not only among the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani tribes that deny Bin Laden’s presence in the area, but also fundamentalists including the Muslim Brotherhood that has changed its strategy.
The leader of the Egyptian-based brotherhood, Mahdi Akef, has called the Saudi leader “a mujahid that sincerely fights against foreign occupation to be closer to Allah”.
In an interview published on the Arab website, Elaph, read by many young Saudis, Akef said he supported the activities of al-Qaeda against occupiers and not those against the people.
The first victim in this strategy was Libyan Abu Laith al-Libi, al-Qaeda’s number three, killed in a US air raid in January in Mir Ali, in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Two Kuwaitis were also killed in the attack and a Libyan who was one of the group’s leaders.
The US aircraft had targeted an al-Qaeda summit where al-Libi was meeting Abu Obeida Tawari al-Obeidi and Abu Adel al-Kuwaiti. Another Libyan leader, Abdel Ghaffar al-Darnawi, who was previously responsible for links in Iran before moving to the frontline in Afghanistan, was also at the meeting.
After that raid, Mansoor Dadullah, the brother of a senior pro-Taliban militant commander Mullah Dadullah, was seriously injured in a blitz by the Pakistani army in February in a village in Baluchistan where he was hiding with four other militants. He was then captured by Pakistani security forces.
A few days later, the Americans began fresh action launching Drones that killed 13 militants in Waziristan in northern Pakistan and 15 terrorists were killed in another raid on 14 May in the tribal region of Bajaur, on the Afghan border.