Pakistani militants, Al Qaeda seen forging new deadly alliance

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Disguised in military-style uniforms, Pakistani extremists waited in a stolen van in the port city of Karachi near a bridge frequented by military officials, and then opened up with machine guns on the motorcade of a high-ranking general.

Lieutenant General Ahsan Saleem Hayat survived the carefully planned June 10 ambush, which killed 11 others, including his driver. The assailants, said to be linked to Al Qaeda, were quickly identified and rounded up, traced through a cellphone left at the scene, authorities said.

According to two senior intelligence officials, two of the gunmen said they received training several months earlier in small arms, explosives, and ambushes at an Al Qaeda camp in Pakistan's rugged tribal region of South Waziristan, near the Afghan border. The gunmen identified their instructors as Uzbeks and Arabs.

Authorities described the ambush as the result of a growing and deadly alliance between Pakistani extremists and second-rung Al Qaeda operatives from Arab countries and Central Asia who use the border area as a refuge.

The development is a disquieting one, foreign diplomats said, because it suggests that Pakistan's security services may be losing control over home-grown militants they once embraced as allies, first in the struggle against the Soviets in Afghanistan and more recently against Indian forces in Kashmir.

Pakistani officials said they believed that foreign Al Qaeda operatives working with Pakistani militants were also behind two attempts to kill General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, in December.

The same combination, they said, may have carried out the July 30 assassination attempt against Shaukat Aziz, the finance minister who became prime minister Friday.

''For a foreigner to operate in Pakistan has become more and more difficult, so obviously their effort is to use local operatives," said one of the senior intelligence officials, who spoke on condition that neither he nor his organization be identified.

On Aug. 23, government troops killed four foreign fighters and wounded several others in a shootout in a remote tribal section on the Afghan border, authorities said. On Aug. 21, authorities announced the arrest of up to 10 Al Qaeda suspects, including Pakistanis and two Egyptians, after breaking up what they said was a plot to launch attacks against the US Embassy and Musharraf's residence, among other targets.

The decision to apply stronger pressure on militants poses a delicate challenge for Musharraf, who is eager to confront the domestic terrorist threat and has recently won international praise following a series of high-profile Al Qaeda arrests in Pakistan in June and July.

At the same time, Musharraf is reluctant to challenge extremist groups he still regards as potential levers in the conflict with India over control of Kashmir, even though the groups theoretically have been banned, analysts said.

In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper this month, Musharraf said the groups would not ''pack up" until India and Pakistan reached a settlement on Kashmir, which Pakistan regards as the key issue in peace negotiations between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

''What he's saying is, 'If there's movement on Kashmir, it will strengthen my hand to move even more strongly against these people,' " the senior intelligence official said.

Musharraf's allies are losing patience with that argument. During a trip to the region last month, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage publicly called on Pakistan to act more forcefully against the home-grown groups. One foreign diplomat cited reports that fighters from Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of Pakistan's best-known banned militant organizations, had traveled to Iraq in recent months to join other foreigners battling US and Iraqi government forces.

''We have received these reports, and we take them very seriously because we do know there were efforts to take some Pakistanis into Iraq," said the senior intelligence official. But the official said it was unclear whether the efforts succeeded.

The official also asserted that Musharraf had limited room to maneuver against domestic extremists, given the depth of public anger over US policy in the Middle East. ''I think the time has come for others to do more for Pakistan than for Pakistan to do more," said the official. ''I think our commitment on terrorism is absolutely unparalleled, and it needs to be acknowledged."