Like Christopher Robin in Winnie the Pooh, Ayman al-Zawahiri was busy, probably back soon, according to news reports today, and not killed in the UAV strikes yesterday.
"Al-Zawahri was not there at the time of the attack," the Pakistani official told Reuters.
Maybe the official could clue us in to where he actually is?
The airstrikes yesterday morning destroyed three houses in a near-Afghanistan Pakistani village, killing upwards of 30 people. Pakistan's information minister condemned the attack as thousands of locals protested the attacks.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed did not directly blame the U.S. for the attack, which killed at least 17 people, but he said the government wanted "to assure the people we will not allow such incidents to reoccur." (USA Today/AP)
Sure, he's got that power. He added:
"The US ambassador will be called to the foreign office." (Al Jazeera)
A Pakistani intelligence source said he had been told by US officials the strike was ordered based on information that al-Zawahiri and Mullah Mohammad Omar, the ousted Taliban leader, had been invited to a dinner to celebrate this week's Muslim Eid al-Adha festival. They had no confirmation, however, that either had been there at the time of the attack at about 3am on Friday (2200 GMT Thursday). Mullah Dadullah, a senior Taliban commander, said no Taliban commander had been at the dinner. (Al Jazeera)
"I know all the 18 people killed. There was neither al Zawahri nor any other Arab among them. Rather they were all poor people of the area," Haroon Rashid, the area's National Assembly representative, was quoted as saying by the Afghan Islamic Press, a news agency based in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar. (Reuters)
"This is a big lie. ... Only our family members died in the attack," said Shah Zaman, who lost two sons and a daughter. "They dropped bombs from planes, and we were in no position to stop them, to tell them we are innocent." (AP)
President Musharraf made vague references to some incident and the Pakistani people continue to show their displeasure with the official government's attitude of putting a blurry filter on America's action in the FATA area. Not that the Pakistani military has any more control of the area to speak of, either.
President Pervez Musharraf, addressing local government officials in Swabi, a town to the north of Islamabad, made an oblique reference to the attack.
"There was an incident in Bajaur. We are looking into it, who did it -- people from outside have come," he said, without pointing a finger directly at the United States.
A military spokesman at U.S. Central Command in Florida said there had been no official report of an attack in Pakistan.
Anger has been building in Pakistan over repeated U.S. intrusions, and on Saturday hundreds of protesters chanted anti-American slogans at Inayat Killi [sic Inayat Qala] village, near Damadola. (Reuters)
Villagers in Damadola denied hosting al-Zawahri or any other al-Qaeda or Taliban figure, saying all the dead were local people. On Saturday, more than 8,000 tribesmen staged a peaceful protest in a nearby town to condemn the airstrike. (USA Today/AP)
"Americans have killed innocent women and children and now they are diverting attention of the world from this cruel act through the baseless claim that al-Qaeda leaders were targeted," Sahibzada Haroon ur Rashid, a lawmaker from the hard-line Jamaat-e-Islami party told the protest rally.
"This is in fact real terrorism to target innocent people, the children and the women," Haroon said. He rejected the U.S. TV reports that Ayman al-Zawahiri or any foreigner was in the area.
"Hundreds of people took part to pull dead bodies out of the rubble soon after the air strike and the people did not see any foreigner killed in the attack," the lawmaker told the huge rally. He said that the issue of the attack would also be raised inthe parliament and that he had sent a motion to the National Assembly, of which he is a member.
Sahibzada Haroon ur Rashid said all the victims of the attack were local people and condemned it as "open terrorism".
"The people will continue peaceful protests against such attacks," said Rashid.
"The people also condemn President General Pervez Musharraf's policies, which have led to such incidents. We want the (Pakistan) government to avoid pleasing the Americans." (AP)
Musharraf continues to be in a rough spot with his outlier constituents who're the real problem. The people in the cities, modern as they are, are quite happy to ignore that the UAVs fire into what's considered redneck territory. The anti-Musharraf, pro-Islam leaning political groups (JI, above, for example) will continue to use events like this to claim that he's giving away Pakistani sovereignty and try to shake his rule. There've been reports that smaller gatherings have been violent.
The AP seems to be the root source of the report that Zawahiri wasn't there, with USA Today and The Age directly taking excerpts. Also, I've updated my Google Earth placemark for this incident to include the town of Inayat Qala.
Google Earth pointer to Damadola, Pakistan, where Ayman Al-Zawahiri is reported/rumored to be killed, today, in a Predator strike.
"Pakistani military sources told American ABC television that five of those killed were "high level Al-Qaeda figures", and their bodies are undergoing forensic tests for identification."
"One official said intelligence indicated a strong possibility that Zawahri was in the Pakistani village at the time of the airstrike, but there is no confirmation that he was killed.
Pakistani officials say U.S. aircraft, apparently CIA Predator drones, fired as many as 10 missiles at the residential compound. Reports indicate as many as 30 villagers, including some women and children, were killed.
The attack came in the Bajur region of Northwest Pakistan, along the Afghanistan border.
The CIA Predators carry as many as four Hellfire missiles. While some remains were reportedly recovered from the site of the attack, there was still no confirmation Friday night that Zawahri was among the dead. An intelligence official told NBC that it does have a sample of Zawahri's DNA." - MSNBC
"A doctor in the area told The Associated Press that at least 17 people were killed in the attack, but other witnesses at the scene said the death toll was higher." - CNN
Getting Zawahiri, the titular head of Al Qaeda, would mean that the most important and articulate public face of the overarching terrorist organization would be gone. In my opinion, this would signify that we've entered officially into the "Nuisance Times," to borrow a word from the inimitable John Kerry (who ill-fatedly decided that treating the terrorist threat as a crime to be prosecuted was the right way to go) - the disparate terror groups who've been using the umbrella name of Al Qaeda will no longer need to do so nor have any reason to adhere to the specific Al Qaeda agenda.
It's fairly clear that the American public along with their duly elected representatives in the Congress have all but forgotten about the pursuit of Al Qaeda and reports like this in the past weeks, months, or years have become a "nuisance" and more of a concern for a process of traditional legal prosecution rather than a proactive awareness on their parts. Without a singular face for the American public to point to and ask "what he mean by?" the unofficial drain on our collective psyches will become an official status as the variety of retroactive Islamists start vying for their own regional causes (the explosions in Dhaka on 12/25, for example). With our short-term focus, attempting to rally people to keep up support for fighting a multifacted, multiagendaed Islamist threat will be very real difficulty - a reality that's been the problem from day one within our military and intelligence organizations. Now, it's with our public.
The second prong of Zawahiri's death would be that of a sign to the Jihadist/Islamist groups - there's no focal leader to dole out poorly made videos espousing broad blandishments that have kept disgruntled muslim youth cheering on the "movement." Without Zawahiri, the role of top propagandist will be delegated to the individual Islamist organizations - something that'll cause regionalization, specialization, and ultimately, a disconnection from an overarching goal. The question is, when Zawahiri dies, will the idea of the Caliphate be only Bin Laden's?
Another possibility for these events is simple hype/disinformation. Without any ability to confirm whether or not the strikes were aimed at Zawahiri or have actually killed Zawahiri, the reporting with his name attached could be an attempt to flush out denials.