http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME04Df01.html
May 4, 2011
Bali bomber may have been vital link
By Jacob Zenn
Like Osama Bin Laden, he was one of the most wanted international terrorists.
And like the al-Qaeda leader, he was discovered in the relative peace of
Abbottabad.
Umar Patek, the man who masterminded the 2002 Bali bombing, was captured by
Pakistani forces on January 25 in the formerly innocuous city just 60
kilometers north of the capital Islamabad. Patek, a Yemeni who is also an
Indonesian national, trained in Afghanistan in the 1980s when Bin Laden was a
mujahideen commander against the Soviets. Their connection runs deep and it may
have been Patek's detention and vital information from the 40-year-old
terrorist suspect that sealed the deal on Bin Laden's demise.
Abbottabad is neither located near the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of
Pakistan where Bin Laden was thought to be hiding and Taliban support is
strong, nor is the city of 100,000 people associated with the terrorist attacks
plaguing nearby Islamabad, and Peshawar and Lahore.
Until Patek's capture and the US Special Forces' swoop on Bin Laden's compound
three months later, Abbottabad was notable only for the presence of the
Pakistan Military Academy - the equivalent of West Point in the United States.
The possibility that Patek and Bin Laden were connected by one or more al-Qaeda
facilitators or couriers based in Abbottabad is a plausible scenario.
Though less well known internationally than Bin Laden, Patek was no less lethal
and no less committed to the killing of innocents. An explosives expert and
long-time member of the regionally-mobile KOMPAK group within Jemaah Islamiyah,
he first made his name through the Bali bombings, which killed more than 200
people, mostly tourists, in October 2002.
Patek "was one of the Indonesian citizens who is known to be close to al-Qaeda
leader, Osama Bin Laden", an expert from the State Intelligence Academy in
Jakarta said after the capture. [1] Now that Bin Laden is dead, Pakistan, which
has been holding Patek in confinement, may extradite Patek to Indonesia.
For nine years after the Bali bombing Patek, like Bin Laden, lived on the run,
often in southern Mindanao in the Philippines, training terrorists from Abu
Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. He evaded the militaries of
Indonesia, the Philippines and the United States, despite a US$1 million
American bounty on his head.
Patek and Bin Laden reunited?
Patek was on a stopover in Abbottabad on the way to North Waziristan or
Afghanistan to meet al-Qaeda's leadership, but his stay in Abbottabad was more
than merely temporary. He had been in Abbottabad for two weeks before his
capture. Why was he in Pakistan, and specifically Abbottabad, for so long? He
very well may have been trying to connect with Bin Laden, or at least exchange
messages with the al-Qaeda leader.
It appears that Bin Laden was living in the mansion in Abbottabad where he was
killed for some time (at least since August 2010, but some reports suggest it
was built for him as early as 2006). Considering both Bin Laden and Patek's
position in the al-Qaeda hierarchy, they may certainly have had mutual contacts
in Abbottabad.
Otherwise, it is a great coincidence that two of the world's most wanted
terrorists were hiding in the same city without either knowing about the other.
It could also be that Abbottabad's location along the route from Islamabad to
North Waziristan and Afghanistan and its relative security close to the homes
of many Pakistan military members made it the ideal hideout and transit
location. Regardless, Patek's capture and Pakistan's announcement of that on
March 29 raises the question whether Bin Laden was on alert that he might soon
be next.
Connected by couriers?
Patek was captured with his wife hiding out on the second floor of the home of
the parents of an al-Qaeda facilitator who worked as a clerk in a post office
in Abbottabad.
Pakistani security forces detained the facilitator, Tahir Shazad, in January
when he picked up two French militants who were intending to travel with Patek
to North Waziristan and Afghanistan at Lahore's international airport.
Pakistani intelligence, with support from the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), had placed Shazad under surveillance one year before his capture when he
was seen with an Arab terror suspect.
The detainment of Shazad led directly to the capture of Patek and his wife, who
were sheltered in the home of the parents of a university student in Abbottabad
after the student invited the couple in as guests. Pakistan security forces
detained the student who is still in custody.
The link to Bin Laden's hideout was through a courier that the CIA had been
working on tracking for years. Could Patek's facilitator and this courier have
been connected, and could Patek, Patek's facilitator, or even Patek's wife,
have revealed valuable information to Pakistani intelligence that was relayed
to the US and became the game-changer in President Barack Obama's decision to
send in special forces? If Pakistan had been monitoring Patek's facilitator for
about a year, the time frame matches closely with Obama's statement that he
knew of Bin Laden's suspected hideout since August 2010.
The lag in time between Patek's actual capture on January 25 and Pakistan's
announcement on March 29 may have been in order to prevent Bin Laden and his
collaborators from having enough time to plan to relocate to another hideout.
Any movement on Bin Laden or his family's part would have required a thorough
plan as any exposure to the outside would have placed them at risk of
detection.
Naturally, the mansion where he was hiding had no telephone access or Internet
and no view in from the outside. Even the balcony was hidden from outside view
because of the high walls surrounding the perimeter.
Although it is unclear when Bin Laden and his family first took residence in
Abbottabad, the al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership may have purposely preserved
the city's relative peace in order to not draw attention to Bin Laden's
hideout. In fact, in April 2009, Taliban fighters set up a base of operations
60 kilometers northwest of Islamabad in the Kala Dhaka district of Mansehra,
which borders Abbottabad, but the Taliban never crossed into or threatened
Abbottabad.
There have been reports since 9/11 that the Pakistan army and Pakistan's
intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), were helping to
hide Bin Laden. If he benefited from close contacts with members of the
Pakistani military, then it makes sense that Bin Laden would be hiding in
Abbottabad, a city with more than 100,000 people, as opposed to the remote and
mountainous areas along the Pakistan and Afghanistan border.
Another reason why Bin Laden may have chosen Abbottabad is because the hideout
is in a relatively populated environment outside the area of operation of US
drones. In close proximity to the Pakistan Military Academy and surrounded by
civilian neighborhoods, Abbottabad could have been considered an unassuming,
yet well-positioned hideout.
As safe as Bin Laden may have felt in Abbottabad, there have already been
several major terrorist captures in Islamabad and other major cities in its
vicinity: Ramzi Yousef in Islamabad; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Rawalpindi; and
Abu Zubaydah in Faisalabad. Presumably, these terrorists felt safer in cities
and, if they were under the partial protection of the ISI, it was easier for
the ISI to monitor them in the urban environment. All have now been caught and,
except for Bin Laden who is dead, the rest are in detention in the continental
US or Guantanamo.
When Pakistan announced Patek's capture in March, the news contradicted the
consensus belief that Patek was hiding out in Mindanao or Yemen. No prior
reports tied Patek to Pakistan. In fact, Patek was considered a primary suspect
in a Manila bus bombing as late as January 25, the same day he was actually
captured in Abbottabad.
He could have traveled to Pakistan with forged documents between the time he
planned and ordered the bus bombing and January 25, but the fact that the
Philippines officials believed that he was a suspect in the bus bombing and
based in Mindanao shows how little they knew about his whereabouts and how
unexpected it was that Patek was ultimately found in Pakistan on January 25.
The Philippines officials were not alone in their unawareness of Patek's
location. A terrorism expert from the International Crisis Group said at a
panel discussion on radicalism in Jakarta on March 2, 2011, that she heard from
"credible sources" that Patek had recently been sighted in Yemen. [2] Also, in
March 2010 other experts believed that Patek was hiding in Sulu province,
Mindanao and in 2006 he was believed to have been killed in Sulu.
Coincidence or calculated?
If both Bin Laden's killing and Patek's capture did not take place in the same
city, under similar circumstances, and in the same time frame, then it would be
hard to draw any connections between Patek's capture and the gold mine in
uncovering Bin Laden's hideout. Patek could have simply been transiting
throughout Abbottabad and, despite close connections with al-Qaeda in
Abbottabad, not known of Bin Laden's secret hideout.
However, that means that US intelligence would have been more informed about
Bin Laden than Patek, who after all is an insider. If Patek did know of Bin
Laden's presence in Abbottabad, then it is not unlikely that Shazad, Patek's
wife, or Patek let the cat out of the bag during interrogation. Patek may be an
explosive expert, but is not necessarily trained in counter-interrogation
techniques, let alone his wife or Shazad.
There may be further implications of Patek and Bin Laden's capture and killing.
Their terrorist web may unravel and lead to more al-Qaeda captures and killings
and more al-Qaeda and Taliban attacks in retaliation. The "war against terror"
will go on for sure, but if Patek and Bin Laden can go down in succession like
this, then Taliban leader Mullah Omar, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and other al-Qaeda
and Taliban leaders must not be feeling too secure, no matter where they are
hiding.
Notes
1. Umar Patek Is Close To Osama bin Laden Jakarta Updates, April 1, 2011.
2. Bali terrorist sighted in Yemen 9 News, March 2, 2011.
Jacob Zenn is an independent consultant in international security in
Washington, DC and a third-year law student in Georgetown Law's Global Law
Scholars program.
(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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