Attack on the U.S. Capital is next says Taliban Chief Mehsud

I'm going to take a wild guess that this guy is not one of the moderate Taliban that Obama wants to have tea with.
Rees

Very soon we will launch an attack in Washington which will amaze the entire world – Taliban Chief Baitullah Mehsud

SOURCE: Free Internet Press

LAHORE: Pakistan's most wanted militant on Tuesday claimed responsibility for a deadly police academy assault and threatened to attack the U.S. Capital in retaliation for a series of air strikes. ( Watch )

Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, for whom the United States has posted a five-million-dollar reward, said there would be more attacks after Monday's raid on the Lahore police training school that left 12 people dead.

"We claim responsibility for the attack," Mehsud, blamed for the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, said by telephone from an undisclosed location. "This was in retaliation for the ongoing drone attacks in the tribal areas. There will be more such attacks."

"Very soon we will take revenge from America, not in Afghanistan but in Washington, which will amaze the entire world," Mehsud warned.

Seven cadets, a civilian and four attackers died in Monday's raid on the police academy in eastern city Lahore, sparking fears that unrest is seeping out of the tribal badlands and into the heart of Pakistan. Assailants armed with guns, grenades and suicide vests shot their way into the academy in the morning, triggering eight hours of gun battles that lasted until they were overpowered by security forces.

Mehsud, who was accused by the former government of masterminding Bhutto's killing, heads the feared Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The US State Department has branded him a "key al-Qaida facilitator" in the semi-autonomous South Waziristan tribal area bordering Afghanistan. Mehsud said he had set up a council of mujahedeen (holy warriors) grouping different groups "to step up attacks on US and NATO forces in Afghanistan."

He dismissed the US reward for his arrest. "The maximum they can do is martyr me," he said. "We will exact our revenge on them from inside America." Mehsud's group is influential in both North and South Waziristan, as well as in the Bajaur tribal district to the north, which Pakistani security forces said they had effectively cleared last month following a major offensive. He commands thousands of fighters across the tribal areas on the Afghan border, although official estimates vary on the precise number. His capacity for launching attacks outside the region is questionable.

At least 35 US drone strikes have killed over 340 people in Pakistan since August last year. The US military does not usually confirm such attacks, but its armed forces and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operating in Afghanistan are the only ones to deploy drones in the region.

In Lahore, interrogators questioned dozens of people over the assault. Punjab province's police chief Khalid Farooq said 50 had been picked up. "These people will now be interrogated," he added. "Things are moving in a positive direction but it is too early to say who was involved." A bearded man -- who interior ministry chief Rehman Malik said was Afghan -- was arrested for allegedly trying to attack police outside the compound. Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif said a judicial commission would be set up to investigate the attack, whose findings would be made public. Chief suspects for the attack are homegrown Islamist groups or Taliban and al-Qaida militants holed up in the tribal areas.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking at an international conference on Afghanistan Tuesday, backed plans for reconciliation talks with members of the Taliban or past Al-Qaeda supporters who reject violence. "They should be offered an honorable form of reconciliation and reintegration into a peaceful society, if they are willing to abandon violence, break with al-Qaida, and support the constitution," she said. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband condemned Monday's attack near Lahore and pledged international help to root out the extremist threat. Lahore was also the setting for the March 3 gun attack on Sri Lanka's cricket team that left eight Pakistanis dead.
Click to read the rest of the article

Intelligence services have embarked on a crash program to secure the G-20 summit

photo of Mumbai Taj Hotel

World agencies gearing up to thwart upgraded Islamist terror

DEBKAfile Special Analysis
March 21, 2009

Using novel, upgraded tactics, Al Qaeda and fellow Islamist terror groups are outperforming anti-terror agencies in their attacks on targeted countries. International counter-terror agencies are worried enough to start retooling their counter-measures after viewing terrorist performances in Mumbai on Nov. 2008, killing 172 people, Lahore on March 3, causing 8 fatalities, and the Jordan Valley, shooting dead 2 Israeli policemen.
India, for instance, is overhauling its special forces from top to bottom and preparing to launch the world's first anti-terror satellite RISAT 2 on short-order delivery from Israel.

British intelligence and anti-terror services have embarked on a crash program to secure the G-20 summit opening in London on April 2,fearing the posh hotels hosting the leaders and their retinues are designated for a Mumbai-style massacre.

Western terror experts have detected common traits in the recent spate of attacks:

1. Preparation and execution straddle several countries as attested to by the highly-polished, coordinated attacks in separate places – India, Pakistan, Jordan and Israel.

2. Select jihadis are extensively trained to operate in large teams, using elite tactics and skills superior to existing combat techniques practiced by the special operations units of regular armies and security service SWAT teams in the targeted countries.

3. They may undergo training for as long as six months, a testament to the kind of long-term operational planning which is beyond the capabilities of most local law and order services – even in high-profile centers like Mumbai, London, Tel Aviv or Paris.

4. Al Qaeda and its ilk are now going in for large-scale attacks carried out by small armies of terrorists trained to operate in fully compartmentalized conditions.

The ten gunmen who carried out the Mumbai atrocity had support teams of hundreds deployed in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kashmir and other parts of India.

The Lahore attack was perpetrated by 14 men.
Both teams operated like well-oiled machines on terrain which they had studied thoroughly.

5. The new terrorists are trained to carry large quantities of ammo, transportable missiles, grenades, rockets and explosives.

This enables them
- to maximize the lethality of their mission;
- to commandeer targeted sites at top speed. In Mumbai, they swiftly seized three large hotels, a main train terminus and the Habad Center;
- to outgun the local security forces in the first moments of the attack. In Mumbai, the local forces took two days to rally and muster enough firepower to suppress the attack. In Lahore, the terrorists effectively silenced Pakistani security personnel for long enough for them all to escape without a scratch.

6. Islamist terrorists have learned to operate long distance, preparing assault teams in one country to hit another and moving them in fast, even taking over ships, planes, vehicles or trains.

As much effort and resources are invested in transport as in other facets of an operation. The Mumbai assailants were smuggled in from Pakistan; for Lahore, they came from the Pakistan-Afghan border region; for the Jordan Valley, they stole in from the Hashemite Kingdom.

In that last attack, it is now estimated that 5 or 6 gunmen, members of al Qaeda, took part.

The highly-enhanced tactics now employed by Islamist terrorist organizations are being met with improved counter-measures by potentially vulnerable countries.

The Israeli spy satellite acquired by India in an extra-fast transaction is capable of day-and-night viewing and all-weather imaging, which enables Indian forces to keep track of terrorist movements through the low-cloud cover prevailing in the monsoon season. India is the first country in the world to acquire a surveillance satellite tailored specifically to counter terror.

The British authorities are in high gear for securing the G-20 summit to be kicked off on April 1 by the first face-to-face encounter between US president Barack Obama and Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.

They are also preparing for the 2012 London Olympics.

The London Daily Telegraph reports that British security services officials are judging the threat against the UK to be at the "severe end of severe." Previously focused on preventing bombings, they are most concerned since the Mumbai massacre about attacks using automatic weapons on major hotels and public buildings.

They are considering issuing guidance to the managements of places where people gather in large numbers and are watching for small arms being smuggled in to the UK through ports or remote airfields.

Cagey about their preventive tactics, British officials are working to the slogan of the four "Ps – Prevent, Pursue, Protect and Prepare."
Click to read the article