DAR AL HARB/ISLAM - PAKISTAN: AL QUEDA REGROUPS IN ITS NEW SANCTUARY - PAKISTAN - AMERICA'S BILLIONS THAT ARE IN PAKISTAN'S COFFERS SPENT WELL ! ! !

Al-Qaida regroups in new sanctuary in Pakistan, U.S. says
by Jonathan S. Landay

WASHINGTON - While the U.S. presses its war against insurgents linked to al-Qaida in Iraq, Osama bin Laden's group is recruiting, regrouping and rebuilding in a new sanctuary along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, senior U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement officials said.

The threat from the radical Islamic enclave in Waziristan is more dangerous than that from Iraq, which President Bush and his aides call the ''central front'' of the war on terrorism, said some current and former U.S. officials and experts. Bin Laden himself is believed to be hiding in the region, guiding a new generation of lieutenants and inspiring allied extremist groups in Iraq and other parts of the world.

Al-Qaida, its allies in Afghanistan's Taliban movement and Pakistani radicals ''have free rein there now,'' said Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department intelligence analyst who's with the Middle East Institute, a Washington policy organization.

The remote Pakistani region ''is the real heart of the war on terror, and we're losing,'' said a U.S. intelligence official who, like most of his colleagues, requested anonymity because intelligence reports on the matter are highly classified and because their pessimism conflicts with the administration's public statements. ''We took our eye off the ball when we went into Iraq.''

A truce last Sept. 5 between the Pakistani government and pro-Taliban tribes and Islamic radicals provided al-Qaida with its new sanctuary in which to plot terrorist operations and train an influx of fresh foreign recruits, U.S. officials and experts said.

The deal, in which the Pakistani army returned control of the region to tribal leaders, ended three years of fighting in which some 70,000 Pakistani troops deployed at Washington's behest failed to crush the insurgents while causing extensive civilian casualties and losing hundreds of their own men.

Pakistani forces withdrew to major bases in return for the tribes' promise to eject foreign jihadis. The deal, however, left Waziristan in the hands of the Islamists, who've imposed strict Islamic law.

Al-Qaida has been using training camps in the area to teach lessons learned from fighting the U.S.-led coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the officials said.

''Al-Qaida and the Taliban have to a troubling degree been able to recreate ... the environment that existed in Afghanistan under the Taliban, to include recruiting and training foreign jihadists and financing and planning terrorist operations,'' a U.S. intelligence official said.

A senior State Department official, who requested anonymity so he could speak candidly, said the Pakistani army had removed some checkpoints on routes into Waziristan after the truce, allowing an influx of fresh Arab recruits into al-Qaida training camps from September to December.

''The danger is worse because they moved in, and getting rid of them is harder,'' the official said.

''We're already seeing spillover effects in southern and eastern Afghanistan at the same time we're seeing TTP (tactics, techniques and procedures) being transferred back to Afghanistan from Iraq,'' the U.S. intelligence official said. ''It's only a matter of time before we see those effects elsewhere as well.''

U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials already have noted a surge in Taliban and al-Qaida attacks and suicide bombings against U.S.-led NATO troops, government forces and civilians in Afghanistan.

At least 94 U.S.-led coalition troops in Afghanistan have died since Jan. 1, compared with 77 during the same period last year, according to iCasualties.org, an Internet organization that tracks coalition casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The senior State Department official said that Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler, remained ''a strong ally'' who'd cooperated in the arrests of several top al-Qaida operatives, and added that Pakistan had aided in the killings of two senior Taliban leaders this year in Afghanistan.

''The deal in Waziristan did not work, has not worked. The Pakistanis understand that,'' he said.

''They are still required to kick out the Arabs and stop Talibanization ... and they are making the effort.''

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The U.S. government remains: 'STUCK ON STUPID'...


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