Al Qaeda in disarray because of aggressive strategy: CIA

* Director Leon Panetta says al Qaeda leadership has gone deeper into hiding


* Says Pakistan has given CIA access to Mullah Baradar




Daily Times Monitor



LAHORE: The CIA director has claimed that aggressive attacks against al Qaeda in the Tribal Areas have driven Osama Bin Laden and his top deputies deeper into hiding and disrupted their ability to plan sophisticated operations.




An American newspaper - the Washington Post - quoted CIA Director Leon Panetta as saying that so profound was al Qaeda's "disarray" that one of its lieutenants, in a recently intercepted message, pleaded with Osama to come to the group's rescue and provide some leadership. He credited improved coordination with the Pakistani government and what he called "the most aggressive operation that CIA has been involved in our history" - offering a near-acknowledgment of what is officially a secret war.




"Those operations are seriously disrupting al Qaeda," said Panetta. "It's pretty clear from all the intelligence we are getting that they are having a very difficult time putting together any kind of command and control, that they are scrambling. And that we really do have them on the run."




Panetta said the combined US-Pakistani campaign was taking a steady toll in terms of al Qaeda leaders killed and captured, and was undercutting the group's ability to coordinate attacks outside its base along the Pak-Afghan border.




Panetta's upbeat remarks contrasted with recent intelligence assessments of continuing terrorist threats against the US. But he also said al Qaeda would continue to look for ways to strike inside the US. "Such threats make it all the more necessary to strike al Qaeda in its home base," said Panetta.




According to the Washington Post, the CIA is believed to have mounted 22 secret strikes inside Pakistan this year. A March 8 strike is believed to have been the first to occur in an urban area.




Panetta, while declining to comment on the strike itself, said the death of an al Qaeda commander in the strike sent a "very important signal that they are not going to be able to hide in urban areas".




He also cited the recent arrests of top Taliban figures - most notably Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar - as tangible evidence of improving ties with Pakistan's intelligence service.




Access to Baradar: He said Pakistan had given the CIA access to Baradar since his capture, and "we're getting intelligence" from the interrogation".




Panetta said coordination between the CIA and its Pakistani counterparts had improved over the last year.




Panetta said the CIA did not know precisely where Osama and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, were hiding, but agency officials believed "the two are inside Pakistan".




"We thought that the increased pressure would... either bring them out to try to exert some leadership ... or that they would go deeper into hiding," he said. "And so far we think they are going deeper into hiding."

Americans have direct access to Mullah Baradar: officials

WASHINGTON: US investigators have recently been given more regular direct access to Pakistani-led interrogations of the Afghan Taliban's No 2 leader, US officials said on Wednesday, a month after his arrest was announced. Pakistani limitations on US access to Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar have been a source of tension since he was captured in Karachi. It was unclear whether the "direct US access" was yielding useful intelligence. "There is direct access to him," a US official said on condition of anonymity. He described the level of direct access of late as "definitely more than minimal". A military official said on Wednesday that a "good" amount of information was flowing to commanders and "the hope is this is a precursor of things to come". But the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, held out Baradar's arrest as a potential game-changer, telling reporters separately that it "seems to have shaken the confidence of some of the Afghan Taliban leadership". "We see indications that they are trying to figure out the way ahead," McChrystal told reporters, referring to the tentative response of Taliban leaders to Baradar's arrest. reuters