"Insensitive" Terror War weakening al Qaeda

'Qaeda is unravelling'

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said on Friday that al-Qaeda had been seriously weakened by the current roundup of arrests of key operatives and was "in the process of dismantling."

"The noose around Al-Qaeda is tightening. But it does not mean we are close to capturing Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri," Hayat was quoted as saying in an interview.

"We have no accurate information on the location of bin Laden. No one knows with any sort of accuracy about the whereabouts of Osama or al-Zawahiri."

He said none of the intelligence gathered in the current crackdown pointed to any particular location of the elusive terror network chief.

"He could be anywhere," the minister said.

Bin Laden and Zawahiri, his Egyptian deputy, are believed to be hiding in the mountains straddling the porous 2,450 km border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

There has been no confirmed sighting of them since the December 2001 US-led assault on the Tora Bora mountains on the Afghan side of the border. [The Ponderosa: Are we the only ones who find this a bit ... odd? Could he be ... dead?]

Intelligence officials in Pakistan believe bin Laden is still alive, but say they have no clear information on his whereabouts.

In the past month, Pakistani agencies have penetrated a major Al-Qaeda wing, capturing more than 20 al-Qaeda suspects, including a gallery of top operatives who were in the throes of plotting fresh terror strikes in Britain, Pakistan and the United States.
"We have been able to arrest quite a number of them, around two dozen since July," Hayat said.

"We have captured some key figures who have a wealth of information. As a result of that our security forces are going after the others."

Good news, but we are certain Kerry could do it more effectively ... </sarcasm>