Al-Qaeda sniffs opportunity in Gaza By Syed Saleem Shahzad
Asia Times Online investigations, including interviews with people associated with al-Qaeda, reveal that the central leadership of al-Qaeda, sitting somewhere in the tribal areas straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan, sees the Gaza conflict as a major opportunity to inflame the war theater in Gaza and make it a permanent trouble spot for Israel and Egypt, just as al-Qaeda-led areas of conflict have created seemingly intractable difficulties for Pakistan and Afghanistan.
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In Pakistan's Swat Valley, for example, which is a non-tribal area, al-Qaeda-led militants initially were forced by the military to abandon their bases, but within a few weeks they reassembled as guerrilla fighters and just concentrated on surviving with the help of the local population.
Now, according to a recent report by Rahimullah Yusufzai, an expert on Pashtun tribalism, they control large areas of the valley. In an article published in The News International, "Taliban rule the roost in Swat through FM radio", Rahimullah explains in detail how the Taliban govern, with their orders broadcast over the radio.
Al-Qaeda has similar designs in the present Israel-Palestinian conflict. If Hamas abandons its bases in Gaza and gets the chance to scatter and only tries to survive around the Israeli forces, with the support of the local population and militants from neighboring countries like Iraq and Yemen, and most importantly from Egypt, it could regroup and stream back into Gaza to create a little Afghanistan and Iraq close to the heart of Israel.
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In Pakistan's Swat Valley, for example, which is a non-tribal area, al-Qaeda-led militants initially were forced by the military to abandon their bases, but within a few weeks they reassembled as guerrilla fighters and just concentrated on surviving with the help of the local population.
Now, according to a recent report by Rahimullah Yusufzai, an expert on Pashtun tribalism, they control large areas of the valley. In an article published in The News International, "Taliban rule the roost in Swat through FM radio", Rahimullah explains in detail how the Taliban govern, with their orders broadcast over the radio.
Al-Qaeda has similar designs in the present Israel-Palestinian conflict. If Hamas abandons its bases in Gaza and gets the chance to scatter and only tries to survive around the Israeli forces, with the support of the local population and militants from neighboring countries like Iraq and Yemen, and most importantly from Egypt, it could regroup and stream back into Gaza to create a little Afghanistan and Iraq close to the heart of Israel.
posted by temporal at 1/07/2009
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