Taliban And al Qaeda Rats Abandon Camps In Pakistan

Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail is reporting that al Qaeda and Taliban camps in North and South Waziristan have emptied, and that now they’re expanding into settled districts of the Northwest Frontier Province. They are said to be reorganizing in both Afghanistan and Pakistan for a major fight.

The Asia Times’ Syed Saleem Shahzad reported that there were 29 camps in all, and all but one have been dismantled.

While The Fourth Rail sources verify the camps’ existence, they noted the camps have not been dismantled, but the infrastructure is still in place. “The physical infrastructure (camps and the like) still exist, they haven’t been dismantled. They’ve just been abandoned or are being operated by skeleton crews,” the senior military intelligence source said.

It could be that they’re laying low out of fear of a U.S. attack.

The al Qaeda and Taliban personnel abandoned the 28 camps after “the US had presented Islamabad with a dossier detailing the location of the bases as advance information on likely US targets,” Mr. Shahzad reported. “All other leading Taliban commanders, including Sirajuddin Haqqani, Gul Bahadur, Baitullah Mehsud and Haji Omar, have disappeared,” said Mr. Shahzad.

At any ate, the emptying of the camps is cause for concern:

“We don’t know where they went to or who was in the camps,” the military officer told The Fourth Rail.. “They are well trained, these aren’t your entry level jihadis. They are dangerous.”

“This is one of the reasons that we are worried about a major CONUS [Continental United States] attack,” the senior military intelligence source told The Fourth Rail, noting the recent influx of news of terror cells attempting to penetrate the US. “If they evacuated their bases, they almost certainly did so out of fear of more than just the Pakistani army.”

Meanwhile, The Fourth Rail also reports that the US military intelligence community is
“urgently assessing how secure Pakistan’s nuclear weapons would be in the event President Gen. Pervez Musharraf were replaced.”

H/T: Hotair

INTERESTING:

We were speculating in the Comments section what Musharraf’s chances were of being re-elected.

Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, believes that Musharraf’s days are over. Here’s what Rashid, the author of “Taliban” and “Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia,” had to say a Washington Post.Com article:

The United States needs to help bring about a peaceful and fair political transition in Islamabad before it again insists that the army battle al-Qaeda. Musharraf needs to shed his uniform, hold elections and declare that he is not a candidate for the presidency. Washington then needs to help ensure that the new elected leadership works with the army to mobilize public support for the struggle against extremism.

Neither the army nor Bhutto can battle the extremists alone and save Pakistan from meltdown. Bhutto understands this, but the army still does not. Bush has to accept that his ally’s political days are over — that it is time to stop equating Musharraf with Pakistan.