1. The Fatah al-Islam commander Shaker al-Abessi was transferred to Iraq to spearhead a new offensive. Al Abessi commanded the four-month Fatah al-Islam confrontation with the Lebanese army from the Badr al-Nahr camp near Tripoli in the summer of 2007. The Lebanese army saved the day and the northern provinces from falling into the hands of this al Qaeda offshoot, only after the US stepped in with assistance and an infusion of weapons. Even then, it took a battle of wits between Adm. William Fallon, chief of US Central Command, and al-Abessi to beat him.Even then, al Qaeda had the last word: On Dec. 12, Brig. Gen. Francois el-Hajj, the Lebanese officer who worked with Adm. Fallon, was assassinated.Meanwhile, al Qaeda, hoping to build al-Abessi into a second al-Zarqawi, has sent him to establish the “Iraq Front,” a new body for recouping the organization’s trounced forces and turning the tables on the US army. His plan to transit the Syrian-Iraqi border with his top men shows how fragile and uncertain are Washington’s gains in securing joint Syrian-US control of the border.
2. A large body of the Fatah al-Islam rank and file was transferred from Lebanon to the Gaza Strip, apparently by sea. This week, they were in the thick of the Hamas-Jihad Islami missile and mortar offensive against Israel.By these two steps, al Qaeda established support structures for its next two offensives in a region ranging from Afghanistan in the east to the Mediterranean in the west.Osama bin Laden’s momentum after Benazir Bhutto was murdered might have been slowed had the Americans reacted rapidly with a combined US-Pakistan military assault on al Qaeda and Taliban strongholds in Pakistan and Afghanistan, on a scale comparable to the post-9/11 campaign. But neither army was ready. The day before the murder, Washington laid plans to boost its special forces presence in Pakistan in the course of 2008.In an interview to the Voice of America, Adm. Fallon said: “What we’ve seen in the last several months is more of a willingness to use their regular army units along the Afghan border.” He added: …”and this is where I think we can help a lot in providing the kind of training and assistance and mentoring based on our experience with insurgencies recently and with the terrorist problem in Iraq and Afghanistan.”This belated plan will have to be re-examined in the anti-Musharraf, anti-US climate prevailing in Pakistan after the Benazir Bhutto tragedy.By pushing for elections to be held on Jan. 8 as scheduled, Secretary Rice is making the same mistake as before, when her democratic urge raised up the terrorist Hamas in a Palestinian election two years ago.Musharraf his holding his horses, waiting for Bhutto’s party to meet Sunday, Dec. 30, and decide whether to run or join the boycott declared by the rival Nawaf Sharif. Monday, the election commission convenes for its decision. This process cannot be foisted on Islamabad without risking increased violence directed against the president as an “American puppet.”Musharraf was already on a downward slope before Bhutto’s death and his army was falling back in the war on Islamist extremists. DEBKAfile’s sources foresee this process accelerating and opening the way to the takeover by Taleban and al Qaeda of more parts of Pakistan.Given this prospect, anxiety over the fate of Pakistan’s estimated 50-60 nuclear warheads is more acute. The Pentagon’s assurance Friday that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure under the control of the military would become meaningless if that military turns against the United States. An American operation to pluck that arsenal from terrorist clutches might be fought off by that same military. In these circumstances, however badly they are needed for the war against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq, US special forces will need to be permanently deployed within speedy reach of Pakistan’s nuclear stocks. A single bullet (or blast) has switched the spotlight on the world’s most dangerous nuclear threat from Iran to Pakistan.
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1325
As in the days of Noah....